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The Fixer

Today my Father is eighty years old. I really can’t believe it, and I’m sure he can’t either. I want him to know on this special day, how grateful I am for the relationship we have had all these years, and that I still think of him as the fixer, even after all this time.

When I was newly married, and a silly girl of 19, I asked my husband to fix my broken necklace.”Fix it?!? Nah, we will just have to get you a new one, or take it to get fixed.” I was stunned. “But, my father always fixes my broken jewelery.” “Well, take it to your dad then,” was the reply. No disrespect to my husband, he was only 25 at the time, and since then has proved that he can fix almost anything that can, and does break in a home, and he can even build the home itself.

I guess what surprised me was that not all men are like my father. Not every man can fix anything that needs fixing, or wants to. Not every man knows the answers to impossible questions like, “which one is worse, a heart attack or a stroke?” Or, “is a tornado worse than a hurricane?” Or, “who is Dow Jones?” And not every man will take the time to explain the answers to a little girl who still remembers needing to know, 40 years later. Some men do not care to be subjected to the Little House on the Prairie series, all eight books of them, read aloud by a fumbling, bumbling eight year old beginner. Some men do not stay up late to fashion the best polyhedron ever, for a girl struggling in geometry, or spend an afternoon teaching her how to stop and start on a hill with a standard, so that she no longer avoids stop lights on an incline.

My father and I spent a lot of time together when I was growing up. He was usually puttering around outside, and I often tagged along. We spent a lot of time just hanging out, not necessarily saying much. It wasn’t about what was said, it was the fact that he enjoyed spending time with me. A little girl learns a lot from a friendship with her father, most importantly she learns how she wants to be treated by men in the future. I’m thankful for the ease of our relationship which many little girls do not have with their fathers. Sadly, some have grown up with a distrust in men; they were not the fixers they should have been in their lives, they were the breakers. I’m thankful that he set the bar high, and that my husband has lived up to those expectations, except for maybe fixing that broken necklace.

Happy Birthday, Dad!!

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Dr. Bean, Dolphins and Dancing With the Stars

My granddaughter’s birthday is tomorrow, she will be five. How this is possible, so quickly, I do not know. I remember when my kids were babies, while I enjoyed them at least half of the time, the other half of the time I thought, A. “How long until nap time?” B. “When is it socially acceptable to put this kid to bed?”  C. “Will I get to sleep in until 5 am tomorrow, or will we play the, it’s-still-dark-go-back-to-sleep game for an hour?”  And D. “When will they ever go to school?!?”  Some wise person once said of the 0-5 years, “the days are long but the years are short.” As a mom of adult children, I swear that this is true.

But I digress, this isn’t about me and my love of “free time,” of which there is none, with little ones in the house. Rather, it is about our girl, Bean, She was named for her string bean-like appearance on her mother’s first ultrasound picture. She quickly became “baby Bean,” and has carried the moniker quite successfully ever since, except for that short-lived assertion of independence when she demanded that we all refer to her as “Chloe Madison,” instead of her God-given, or at least Mama and Noni given handle, Bean. She has had a successful career as Dr. Bean, and has treated stuffed animals, her babies, and most enjoyably, Noni and Papa. This has become, by far, our favorite game. This is how it goes. Someone (Papa or me), lies prostrate on the couch, a position that is rare in and of itself with a pre-schooler in the house, and even less frequently encouraged by said pre-schooler. At this point, Dr. Bean comes to my bedside to assess me, removes my real stethoscope from around her neck, and laying it on my stomach, demands that I  breathe. She then moves to the appropriate field for auscultation, and pronounces my lungs “good.” She looks in my ears, and in my mouth and declares that she will write a “scription to take to the medication store.” Now, this part is crucial if we are feeling extra lazy that day. She will either march back to her desk, bang on an old keyboard, answer a defunct cellphone with a curt, but believable, ” yes! This IS Dr. Bean, ” scribble on a post-it note and then demand that the infirmed fetch it and be on their way. OR, she might do a more thorough assessment if vague symptoms present themselves. “my pinky toe hurts,” I might complain, or “my elbow is itchy.” This will buy the indolent grandparent a few more minutes with her feet up, but eventually, as all medical professionals do when faced with an obvious milker of the system, she will sigh, and in her most professional voice, assert that I am fine. “Now, go home and let the next patient lie down.”

We have called her Dr. Bean since the age of two, when she received her first kit, thus she has already spent half her life caring for others and it seems that the good doctor is starting to show signs of caregiver fatigue. She has wondered on occasion, if this a profession that she will stick with for her whole life and upon meeting an emergency room physician while visiting  her mother at work, and after having exchanged professional pleasantries, Dr. Bean announced that perhaps she might choose another career path. “It’s either that, or I might become a dolphin, I’m not sure which one will work out,” she said seriously.  He was kind enough to nod solemnly, as if he too, while in the throes of med school had nearly tossed it all out and dove in the ocean, never to be seen or heard from again. The last time she saw him, while visiting her mother at work again, he nodded respectfully,  one healthcare professional to another, and said, “Hello, Dr. Bean.” “I don’t think I’m going to be a doctor anymore, it’s not working out,” she announced.  “Ahhh, dolphin then?” Bean nodded, but her mother and I know the truth; Bean clings to us like a baby monkey to his mother even in a shallow pool. Swimming unaided in an ocean for a lifetime,  is an unlikely scenario, at least for her.

You have to hand it to the girl though, she has dreams. Dolphin fantasy aside, she is now entertaining thoughts of a career in the dancing industry. Her plan is to be on Dancing With the Stars, as one of the professionals of course, not one of the stars. To that end, she has just entered her third year of dance. This career choice, although not likely either,  is still looking much more promising than the dolphin avenue.

She will do something interesting though, mark my words. She is plucky, spunky and as colorful as the season she was born in. She can be a challenge but she is always a pleasure. A lover of people, conversation, and babies, she never sits still and she rarely stops talking. She is the type of child who hugs you when you surprise her with a piece of gum. She is as sweet as she is sassy, She knows what is right and tells those who don’t know, how to do things. She is smart, and a natural leader. Future dolphin? maybe not, but this girl is destined to be great, and I’m not just saying that because I’m her Noni! Happy Birthday,  Bean

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My father’s “number four daughter”

My name is supposed to be David. My parents. at least my Dad, having already had three daughters planned on having a boy. I’m sure it was a bit of a disappointment when I was born without a Y chromosome but if it was, no one ever said so. Quite the contrary, at least as far as my mother was concerned, this made things much easier. She knew a lot about raising little girls and since none of my sisters had yet hit 13, “the most challenging year” for a girl and for her parents, according to my mother, she probably figured it was smooth sailing. Ha! As for my two oldest sisters, they were happy that they had a living doll to dress and to cart around. They did too, they took me everywhere. This also meant, coming from a family of readers, that they now had an “Amy”, for their March sisters, and a “baby Grace” for the Ingalls girls. That was fine for Meg, Jo and Beth but I never liked being snotty Amy and Grace? She was so insignificant that she was barely mentioned except to say that she caused everyone a lot of grief when she wandered away and got lost on the prairie. If anything, I would have rather been plucky Jo or tomboy Laura, and this is why my Dad and I got along so well.

My sisters could tell you a different story about their father. By the age of 24, my Dad, within a years time, became the father of “Irish twins” and the guardian of two teen boys, my mother’s brothers, who, when their father died suddenly, were left orphans. Partially because of these circumstances, my sisters were raised by a very different father. When I came along, he was in his 30’s, the boys were away at college and having had 10 years of fatherhood under his belt, he was more patient and ready to play with me. Also, since a son was not likely to happen, he treated me like one, and I loved it.

“This is my number four daughter”, he would introduce me to other adults, hands on my shoulders. I think he was proud of having four girls, and that I sometimes acted like a boy. My first memories are of watching football with him. The Dallas Cowboys, his favorite, back in the glory days of the 70’s when Tom Landry was today’s Bill Belichick and Roger Staubach, today’s Tom Brady. “Touchdown!” he would cry, leaping from his chair, causing me to look up from pushing the little truck he made me, the one with the little wooden wheels and popsicle sticks that made the sides of the bed, perfectly fashioned. He patiently explained the game,  the downs, and safety’s, field goals and extra points during commercials for Pabst blue ribbon beer and cigarettes ads, imploring us to “come to where the flavor is” with the ruggedly handsome cowboy. We also watched boxing, which I loved, and sometimes the Indy 500, which I didn’t, because I thought then, and still think, that it’s incredibly boring and the only thing worth watching is when someone crashes and then you feel guilty for getting excited. We played a lot of catch and watched a little baseball and he called me “Kiddo” and “Sport.” He gave me my own pocketknife when I was 5 and we spent time shooting. I liked to hang out with him in his shop in the basement while he worked. He had enormous machines down there, metal and woodlathes, jig-saws and bandsaws. Never one to worry, he allowed me to “dust” the jagged teeth with a clean paintbrush and sweep the metal curlicues on the floor. We didn’t say much, we just were together. Sometimes, I would aloud read to him from whatever book I was reading at the time while he worked. He was subjected to Ramona and Beezus, The Little House on the Prairie series, Nancy Drew and Trixie Beldon. He never complained. Sometimes, I would stop in the middle of reading with questions that had bothered me all day, “which is worse, a heart attack or a stroke? Is a tornado worse than a hurricane? Who is Dow Jones?” He always, always knew the answer. When I went to summer camp, he wrote to me twice in one week, much to the chagrin of my oldest sister who said that in 4 years at Wellesley, he never wrote. He attended every farm league baseball game I played in (my town was too small to have a softball team, so the girls played baseball) and agreed with me when I quit Little league because the coach insisted I throw with my right since I batted right, even though I had fielded like a leftie for years. As I got older, he attended every field hockey game and track meet, both winter and spring, each time bringing me a Skor bar because I was superstitious like that then. He sent flowers to the school when I came in first in regionals and again when I placed in states when I was a freshman, with a card that read, “the ‘kick’ is back” . He taught me to drive a stick shift and made me practice on hills when he learned I was going miles out of the way in my 1979 Honda Accord to drop my boyfriend off so that I wouldn’t have to stop at a red light on a hill.

But then it changed. I had a licence, my parents divorced, and my mom and I, my sisters having long since married and moved away, moved to an apartment in town 15 miles from where my father lived. I quit all sports in favor of cigarettes and parties (it turned out that my mother was 75% right about the 13 thing, my worst year was when I was 16), I didn’t have time for my dad, although he had always had time for me. I didnt make the effort that he had. We talked once in a while and I know he missed going to my events, but he never said so. The years passed and now he is a “snow bird”. He and his wife travel south each winter to avoid the ferociousness of the Maine winter. We see each other occasionally and talk on the phone sometimes, as today,  when I called to wish him a Happy birthday. “hellooo,” he answered heartily. ” Happy Birthday! How does it feel to be 79?” I asked. “Great! Who is this?” “It’s your number four daughter” I answered. He knew me then and we chatted about future plans for celebrating when he returns to Maine in May. I know just what we will do. We will have pizza and cake. We will talk about guns and sports and memories on the deck as we swat away mosquitos and the years. We will take the jeep to the sandpit and shoot as we have always done, his number four and my number one. Happy birthday Dad.