The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for June 2014

The Power of Dad

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The Power of Dad
The sounds of kids laughing echoes in my head.

The Power of Dad is such that I took one ordinary photo from Instagram and turned it into a museum quality photo. Magic.

Ok, that is stretching things a bit but there was a time when my children were very little that they still believed that dad was a magician who could perform magic.

Those days have passed and now I have to work a bit harder to convince these rug rats of mine that the magical powers they used to attribute to me haven’t completely faded away with time and age.

But that is ok with me, they don’t need to see me as a magician. All I really want them to see is that I care about them and that I am involved in their lives.

My own father gets credit for teaching me that.

Then and Now

When people talk about how the modern father is more involved I shake my head because I don’t see it as something that is new or unusual.

My father was always involved in our lives. He might not have been around as much as I wanted him to be but that was only because he had a 90 minute commute to work.

He played with us when he was home and helped with our homework. Most of what I know about doing work around the house and on cars comes from the things he taught me.

So much of who I am as a father is because of what I learned from him.

I have to give Oral-B credit for putting together a video that doesn’t use the stereotype of the bumbling father because what they did below is come up with something that really was touching.

But we’ll have to wait a moment before we get to that point.

What I Hope For

What I hope for is that when my children are grown they remember me the way I have described my father. I hope they look back and see a man who did his best to provide for them in all ways.

I hope they see that the magician/Jedi was human but that he never gave up pushing to reach a little bit farther. I hope they see a man who tried hard to live his dreams and not dream his life.

I hope they see that their father loved them fiercely and that they understand I pushed hard to try and share as many moments with them as I could.

That would make me very happy.

No Stereotypes

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The Oral-B 7000 BLACK features Oral-B’s signature oscillating, rotating and pulsating technology and provides superior cleaning and a more personalized brushing experience compared to a regular manual toothbrush. A SmartGuide wireless display with while-you-brush feedback helps you brush thoroughly, gently and for the dentist-recommended two minutes. Indicator® bristles remind you to replace your brush head every 3 months, or once they’ve faded halfway.

Disclosure: I partnered with Oral-B and Life of Dad, LLC for the #PowerofDad Father’s Day promotion and was compensated for my involvement.

The Layers Of Life

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Sometimes I listen to this video and I think about the layers of life. Yeah, I know it is just the vocals from Abbey Road but when you strip away the music and leave the vocals I can’t help but think about layers.

I think about my children out on the soccer field and how much they have grown. I stare at them and watch as they run and remember how not so long ago they crawled on the floor unaware that legs could be used to stand upon.

And then one day they realized that whatever they saw others do could be done by them too and so they stood.

Age Is A One Way Stream

My father calls to tell me about his meeting with the doctors. “My kidneys aren’t bad enough yet for them to consider a transplant.”

It is good news and I am pleased to hear it, but then I realize I forgot to ask what this means for dialysis. My guess is that he is still teetering on the edge, that place between needing help and not quite needing it.

I think back forty years and remember discovering my neighbor’s dogs were wandering the neighborhood. I know these dogs because they belong to Tom. We go to kindergarten together and since we live a few doors away from each other we are in and out of each other’s houses.

Mom hears me yelling at the dogs to go home so she and dad come outside to help round them up.

“Rocky, go home,” I scream.

Rocky isn’t having it, he barks at me and I run for my mother’s arms. I am not up for a stand off between a German Shepherd who suddenly looks huge.

Dad grabs him by the collar and starts dragging him back towards Tom’s house. I relax, safe in mom’s arms and confident that no dog is going to beat my dad.

“Jack, I need you to come by the house and take care of a few things, your mother will kill me if I get on the ladder or move that stuff myself.”

I tell him I’ll be by later today or tomorrow and think about the guy who took out Rocky. Dad isn’t who we was any more. He is older and his health is best described as being similar to a house of cards.

He doesn’t look frail or weak. The muscle is still there, he can still pick up and move the heavy stuff but it is not a smart idea and his balance isn’t good enough for a ladder.

My kids know him like this but they don’t remember the man I still can see. Age is a one way stream.

Aging and Ego

People talk about aging gracefully but I wonder how many of us do it. I can live with the hair loss and some extra cushioning here and there but I hate not being able to do what I once could.

Don’t care about wrinkles or lines in my face that were never there but not being able to play ball every day without feeling the pounding hurts.

The mysterious aches and pains, waking up wondering why my back hurts when I didn’t do anything or trying to be careful about how I sneeze grinds on my nerves.

My kids ask me about the guy that yelled at mom. “Dad, you told him you would kick his ass if he kept talking to her that way. What would you have done?”

They don’t wait for an answer. They tell each other that dad would have killed him and that dad won’t let anyone mess with the family.

I listen and think about Rocky again. Was he really as big as I remember? Maybe he was a little dog and he just seemed big. Forty years is a long time, memory fades and time colors it.

“Dad, if you beat him up would you go to jail?”

I nod my head, “I might have, that is why I made a point not to touch him. I am not proud of responding that way but I won’t let people talk to any of us like that. Still, there are better ways. I could have phrased things differently.”

My son nods his head.

“Remember when we watched you play basketball? You threw people out of the way to get the rebound.”

I nod my head but I don’t tell him that I remember a few years back when I was faster and more agile and could slip in between the players to grab some of those boards.

The kids don’t know that version of me. They will never know that guy. They have seen the pictures, daughter likes to tease me and ask what happened to my hair and point out that I used to have a six pack.

I could get it back. It is of interest and not just because of ego but because it would mean my kids old man was healthier.

Transitions

My son is wrestling with me. I still have the upper hand and will for a while, but I feel his strength. He is slowly filling out, the muscle is coming and I am proud of him but it is not easy realizing that my time in the sun is changing.

I wonder if my father had similar thoughts and feelings.

Mom is on the phone, “I need you to come over tonight. Your dad isn’t supposed to do this stuff. I already told him to stop so he waits until I am in the other room and then does it anyway.”

Something tells me dad understands.

The Disneyland Hotel Doesn’t Like Naked Men In The Hall

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Breakfast Buffet
There are stories fathers tell their children at any age and then there are ones they are reluctant to ever tell.

I am not talking about moments when their father may have ended up naked in the hall of the Disneyland Hotel because they really don’t want to hear about that and they especially don’t want to hear how their college girlfriend made things…better.

Heck quite a few of the fraternity stories are things that are kept in the vault because though they are some very funny stories you don’t want your kids to do the stupid things you did, even if you managed to come out relatively unscathed.

You can’t really only focus on the tales of how effective you were at cramming for tests and scoring higher than most other students because that is not the kind of role model you want to be and it is dull.

Nor do you really want to focus on just the stories about how many part time jobs you worked so that you could pay for school and go on trips.

So you mix in both the silly and the sublime.

Is It Really All You Can Eat?

There might be an opportunity to tell the rug rats about how you unintentionally helped force an all you can eat buffet that offered take out to implement a policy on how much food you could take out.

That’s because the manager told you that he wouldn’t let you take more than you could eat at one sitting so you came back the next day and spent three hours eating and proved that if you wanted to take home a dozen muffins, a barrel of soup and 198 pounds of assorted foods it was because you could actually eat that much.

And damn doesn’t that story make you miss your 19 year-old metabolism because you could do that and not worry about being sick or gaining weight.

There are other tales that could be told but the ones about the Camaro you owned, well those have to be censored or edited because of that role model thing. The question is how much texture will you apply to the painting you draw for them. Will they see a one dimensional picture of who you used to be or will they get something that shows some more depth.

Perhaps they could read some of the articles and opinion pieces you wrote for the newspaper.

Who You Were Is Not Who You Are

The joy of looking back on your journey isn’t limited to being able to see who you were and how you became who you are. It is having had enough life experience to see and know that who you are now isn’t necessarily who you are going to be and to be excited about that.

This time last year you were cruising around the Metroplex, a Californian who moved to Texas because of opportunity. You moved back to California to take care of some unfinished business and were surprised by just how much you miss Texas.

So you keep your eyes on the housing market, mostly on the midcities and do your best to try to prepare to move everyone back because that opportunity you saw and experienced is calling you.

And because you know that who you want to be is tied up in it all. You can’t see the future but you have a strong gut feeling and you won’t let go of it this time.

There have been too many moments in the past where you didn’t fight hard enough for what you needed but that is not going to happen this time. Those meat paws you call hands are holding on and you are determined to see it through.

In the midst of it all you wonder what you will find when you tell Monty Hall you want to give back the box and take what lies behind door number one.

Maybe you’ll find the Price is Right and you’ll win the Showcase Showdown. Doesn’t matter to you if Drew Carey or Bob Barker is the one who congratulates you because all you care about is knowing this time you stepped through the door so that you could live on the other side and not just look through a window.

Everyone knows the sun is warm, but unless you live there you don’t really know much about it, now do you.

The time has arrived to grow into the man you are to become.

Fathers, Writing, Mistakes & Bullseyes

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Father posing with his son

Russell Crowe has no idea about his role in my parenting. He has no clue about how during the midst of Gladiator I put my hand on my pregnant wife’s belly and silently talked to my baby.

How could he?

We have never talked and I was no more likely to stand up in the middle of the theater in June 2ooo and shout at the screen than I would be today. I may be unfiltered, insouciant and playful but I am not crazy enough to believe that a character on a movie screen would talk back to me.

But I knew one day I would want to show that movie to my unborn child. I knew it was being added to my personal list of favorites and that it would take a place alongside Casablanca, The Princess Bride, Star Wars and others as something we would have to watch together.

It was one of those  movies that I loved that would help me share parts and pieces of myself and I hoped that it would be something he or she would love too just as I had loved doing with my own father.

Writing, Mistakes & Bullseyes

A few days ago I stumbled onto a post where someone shared their writing process and smiled because it made something click inside my head. It made me think about a line from Gladiator, about being a father, about writing and about chasing down our dreams.

Marcus Aurelius: There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish..

I know this feeling of trying to hold onto an idea that is composed of smoke, I know what it means to try to hold water in the palm of your hand. I know what it means to be cautious not to hold on too tight because if you do the water will leak between your fingers and run away.

It is such a hard balance to hold onto and sometimes it is exactly what parenting is like to me. This walk on the tightrope where we try to give our children all they desire without turning them into someone we do not want them to be.

This dance where we try to help them figure out who they are and who they wish to become. We show them the steps and point out where we fell and tell them stories of our successes and our failures and hope they don’t make the same mistakes we did.

But sometimes they do and sometimes we blame ourselves for them because we could have or should have seen what was coming.

I think about it and remember a story about a famous archer who was known for always hitting the bullseye but that was because after he shot his arrow at the target he would draw a circle around it and make it appear he had hit the bullseye.

I think about writing and the comment I left on the woman’s post about writing processes because it all fits together for me.

Writing is a walk through the forest at night, without the help of a moon, flashlight or torch and I love it.

Some of the scrapes and bruises that come from wandering in the dark have served as the best lessons.

Drawing Circles, Advice & Mistakes

My children have heard the story about the archer and about how I interpret it as being flexible, agile and able to adapt to multiple situations. And of course we have talked about how it relates to writing and how sometimes we have to dig a little to find what is interesting so that we can write more interesting stories.

Saturday afternoon my son and I sat down to talk about a situation at school and about how some children are teasing him. I told him sometimes the way to defuse that is by taking ownership of the name and said maybe we would make a t-shirt with that name on it.

Almost as soon as I said it I wondered if I had opened Pandora’s Box because you have to be tough about that. Kids might really give it to him and if he reacts it might make it worse.

But instead of telling him about my concerns I turned on Gladiator and watched it with him. After it was done I told him if he wanted to take these other kids on I wanted him to be able to do it with the conviction Maximus shows here.

He nodded his head and then I wondered if I was holding water in the palm of my hand or squeezing it because parenting is one of those dances where I feel guilty when I step on my partner’s toes.

Is Blog Envy Killing Your Blog?

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The Color of Envy
But I want to earn that. I don’t want to by popularity. We’re not the Yankees. We don’t use our enormous payroll to buy championships. We earn them.”

Some days the words flow easily and some days they don’t.

Today has been one of those days where it is a battle to bring the words.  My best advice for moments like this isn’t the same for everyone and every moment.

Sometimes I’ll tell you to walk away and clear your head and sometimes I’ll tell you that you need to dig in.

Walking away to clear your head isn’t a bad way to go, but it doesn’t help you tell your inner critic to STFU. It doesn’t help you develop the discipline to create when you don’t feel like creating either.

Is Blog Envy Killing Your Blog?

“This joint has moments of brilliance and moments of mediocrity. Over time it has developed a respectable following. I won’t deny that I think it would be great to have six times as many uniques and ten times the number of comments. It would be great.

But I want to earn that. I don’t want to buy popularity. We’re not the Yankees. We don’t use our enormous payroll to buy championships. We earn them.

One thing ten years of blogging has taught me is I am not immune to feeling envy. I am not immune to wishing I had what someone else does or thinking they got it and didn’t earn it.

Those ideas flow through my mind from time to time.

The words in the blockquote above are my own. I wrote them five or six years ago during one of those moments when I was frustrated because I wanted to center myself

So today I am sharing them with you because blog envy can kill your blog and because I need the reminder today. It is an easy trap to fall into, that feeling of frustrating that others are better and you just aren’t getting it done.

I don’t want people to read my words because I run the best contest and giveaways. I want them hear because they find meaning in what I write, because they relate and because they enjoy it.

Write For Yourself

If you write for yourself, if you write things that are interesting and entertaining you will entertain your reader and stimulate your interest in writing.

Others disagree with this advice. Others will tell you that if you are writing online it is because you want to be read and you should strive to entertain them.

I disagree.

Writing for yourself is like being yourself in person. It is like your parents telling you to be yourself and that you will find friends who like you because you are you and not because you are pretending to be someone else.

It is easier to be yourself. It is easier to write for yourself.

Prime the Pump

Sometimes these moments where I tell you about the words not flowing are important because they are how I prime the pump, they are how I find my way back to making the words flow from my fingertips.

Things are flowing now so I have to go now, but I will be back.

See you in the comments.