The Blogfathers

ShotgunDaddy is a name that I came up with when my first daughter was only a toddler. Alison is a beautiful girl, the kind that stops shoppers in mid stride and causes strangers to pause and say hello. The conversations are usually short, and they almost always follow the same general pattern. The stranger says something complimentary to my wife about Alison before turning to me rather seriously and issuing a stern warning: “You better get a shotgun.”

We now have three children (Alison is seven, Henry is five, and Baby Kate is almost two), so sometimes I’m told that I’ll need two shotguns. For his part, Henry is starting to win some fans of his own. Just last week two of my eighth grade girls were looking at a picture of him in my classroom when they told me that they felt sorry for me. Why? “Because the girls are gonna be all over him. I’d hit on him.” Somehow, this doesn’t worry me as much.

But as I was thinking about the comments of my two students and the stares my daughters often get, it occurred to me that this is the essence of being a parent. Everything that happens today carries with it at least a hint of tomorrow. What father hasn’t put a baseball in his son’s crib? Kindergarten graduation somehow reminds you of a similar ceremony that won’t take place for another eighteen years. And when your daughter is dancing with you, standing on the tops of your shoes, how can you keep from thinking of another father-daughter dance on her wedding day?

And so it is with me. When someone tells me that my daughters are beautiful, I can’t focus on the compliment. Instead I see the future and the swarm of boys who will surely descend upon our family once Alison hits middle school.

That, I suppose, is why I write. Each day with our children is full of moments which would otherwise disappear behind the shadow cast by the future. Today, for instance, Henry was in the garage helping me change the laundry. When he pulled the lint catch out from the top of the drier, a cloud of dust swirled into a beam of sunlight that was streaming through the garage window, and Henry was entranced. As he looked up at the cloud, his eyes blinking in the light, he asked me, “Daddy, where did all those crumbs come from?”

This was just a small moment in the life of a small boy, but it was a moment I’d like to remember. Now that I’ve written it down, I’ll never forget it.

Spring Cleaning