Then & Now

Since the spring I feel like I have been living my life on a non-stop carnival ride. First it was getting the house ready for a renter then that blowing up followed by getting it ready to be put on the market to be sold. Post sale there has been paperwork and banking to take care of and a whole lot of crap from the house to figure out what to do with. A few weeks ago Mike and I spent a rainy Sunday putting together shelves and organizing the storage space in this house, and while that looks much better there is still plenty of stuff in the garage that needs a permanent home. I have been trying to figure things out for the better part of the last eight years and for the time being I need a hiatus.

Work is busy, Mike is busy, and for the last week I have had a constant ache in my neck and shoulders. Stress, I thought to myself, surely this is stress from these last few months and then I looked at the calendar. I knew Father’s Day was coming up even though I try every year to ignore it as best I can. But this year Father’s Day and Mark’s birthday were on the same day which explains the neck and shouders that felt like they’d been pounded with a sledgehammer. I couldn’t decide if it was a good thing to get them over with in one day or if it was a double whammy.

Yesterday was a flood of posts on social media about great dads, funny dads, and wise and loving dads that felt like a turn of the knife for those of us with dead dads and/or dead husbands who were dads. I have perfect attendance for making it through these kinds of days but some years the making it through is ugly, exhausting, and so unfair I want to scream through every minute of it. This was one of those years.

In a spur of the moment decision last Monday, Mike bought two tickets for us to see Argentina play here in the World Cup. I tried to pass as my soccer knowledge is extremely limited but he insisted. Monday night we went on a quest to find jerseys to wear to the game. The legit ones were over $100 and I said for a likely one-time wear I’d go with the cheaper version. He did, too, and the next day we were on a bus to Arrowhead stadium where we would join 69,000 other people to watch Lionel Messi score three goals.

Beside me was a father and son from Japan. Behind us a father and son from Argentina. By the look in those little boys eyes they couldn’t believe their luck in getting to see their hero play. By the end of the match the boy next to me was exhausted and slumped in his seat. The other had spent the entire game coughing and if I knew any Spanish I’d have told the dad that this allergy season has been a doozy and his kid needed an inhaler.

When I asked Mike how much the tickets cost he said, “A lot.” I can’t imagine what those around us paid with the added cost of travel, food, and lodging. But good dads do good things for their kids. My kids still need theirs but that’s not how things went, and if you were to ask them how often they miss him the answer would be every single day. Especially so when they can’t give him a dopey card, some new spandex biking shorts, or something for the grill he’d say he loved and then never used.

Then and now. Night and day.