Gooseberry: Getting things right

I am finally becoming the kind of father I would like to be, or rather, that I started out being, but didn’t become because I got sidetracked by other things I thought were more important.

In all honesty, it was more a failure to properly address a conundrum than it was a total failing altogether. I have always loved my kids and done the best by them that I have known how. What I ran into, however, was a misplaced sense of what was best for my family.

Shoes are important. So is food, and school, and soccer, and scouting, and piano lessons and all those things that parents feel they need to make their children’s lives complete. These things require resources. Resources don’t grow on trees. Resources require a profession, which requires a job, which requires a certain commitment of time and effort or the job thing seems to go away.

It all started when I decided a good education would make life so much easier for my family. A few years of sacrifice followed by a lifetime of high hog livin’. But three years of going to school full-time, working three jobs and having highly active callings in church exacted its toll.

My Wonderful Wife and I had two children at the time, two boys who are now in the last couple years of living at home. They didn’t know they didn’t have things as well as other, more wealthy and established families. To them, life was great. One son even felt sorry for his classmates at school because they lived in such small houses and didn’t have a house as big as he did (he then drew a picture of our apartment building to drive home his point). I was driven, however, to be a good provider. After I graduated from law school I spent the typical 12 to 16 hours a day working on Capitol Hill. I would leave home in the morning when my kids were in their pajamas and then wouldn’t get home until after dinner when they were all ready for bed. Once, when my timing was right and I was able to eat dinner with the family and we had spaghetti, I wondered why the food didn’t taste right. That was when I realized I was used to only eating meals after they had been warmed up in the microwave.

Three kids later and a total of 9 years on the job I finally moved off the Hill and into corporate America. But I still didn’t get it right. I spent more than 80 percent of my time on the road. I thought I had to do it for my job and that my family would understand. They did, but it didn’t make things any better.

Finally I was forced to wake up and I stumbled across a great job that now allows me to spend more time at home. It has taken a year or two for me to unwind a little, but I am finally not only being home for dinner, but I am able to cook and help with the dishes, to yell at my kids when they get bad grades and to “encourage” them to do better. I am also able to go on campouts and bike rides and go cross country skiing.

I don’t know if my five children like having me around or not. Sometimes its hard to tell with teenagers, but I like being there to embarrass them and rub their noses in the dirt.

So in other words: when I started, I had these plans of being a great father, like the one I had growing up. I got sidetracked thinking being a great father meant being a good provider. Now I am beginning to realize that being a great father also means being available to smack down a six foot plus teenager because he thought turning in his assignments late was a fine thing to do.