Happy Father’s Day.
I hate these kinds of posts. The ones where I know I’m about to complain for a while. The ones where I will type for an hour then reread and delete the entire thing because I realize just how annoying I sound, even to myself. But I haven’t blogged in a while. Life has been rather un-blog worthy. And I kind of hate that, but there it is.
On the other hand, I do have a story.
Part One: The Trial
John came home late Friday night after spending the previous six nights in the oven known as Smithfield, North Carolina, for a trial. A trial that isn’t even quite over. This week culminates, hopefully, yet another very long and very difficult season in our marriage.
I sometimes joke that John and I have a connection like Elliott and E.T. You know the part where E.T. is at home crushing beer after beer in front of the TV and Elliott proceeds to fall out of his chair at school? Okay so not exactly like that. Because in this scenario, John is E.T. and I’m Elliott, but arguably if anyone is crushing beers in front of Sesame Street at 10:30am, it is probably me. I digress.
John took on a new and complicated case sometime last year. To spare you the super boring (and at this point irrelevant) details, it was one of those situations where his opposition was the evil character on every legal show who wins because “We’re going to bury him in paperwork.”
Bury indeed. On top of the paperwork work load, it seemed he could not catch a break anywhere, not from the judge, not from all the other work that was waiting for him at the office and Clemmons, and not even from me. Because I’m nothing if not the worst kind of supportive wife on planet Earth when it comes to my partner being in a position of need. This is not news.
Unlike TV land court, the real world does not hold nearly so many random loop holes that the good guy finds last minute and zings in for the win. I think it is safe to say that John has been preparing his clients all along for a loss in trial court. His ultimate goal was to either cushion the blow by lessoning the damages, or setting himself up for a win at the appellate level.
As a result, everything he did was critical. And for the last several months, my husband has been under the kind of stress and dare I say spiritual attack that rivaled his battle through last year’s election. Though he is above-average about leaving work at work when he comes home, let’s just say that more than once I’ve had an overwhelming urge to free all the frogs. In short, though I hear we give the appearance of having our shit together most of the time, we were both being buried alive in John’s anxiety and stress. And you know this means our kids have been feeling it too.
So, the first week of summer vacation, and Daddy is not just gone, but completely unavailable for the entire thing. Knowing this in advance, I geared up for easy meals, lazy pool time, adventures with friends, and a few fun surprises to give us something to look forward to.
And do you know what? The week was blissful. More than blissful. We stayed up late with good movies and good books. We slept in until 8 every morning and had more than one non-cereal breakfast. Eliott and Carter stepped up to be more helpful than they’ve possibly ever been in their lives. And while it wasn’t a week of zero fighting, the fact was, the bickering was minimal, the bounce-back rate on disobedience at an all time high, and even Avery wasn’t a thorn in everyone’s sides.
No lie, on Thursday just before dinner I stopped everyone and asked, “Are you guys being good because I’m being nice, or am I being nice because you are being good? I have to know. Because I just started this new herbal supplement for my hormones and I want to know if it is working.”
Eliott said, “I think it is a little bit of both, Mom, but don’t stop taking the pills even though they make you super gassy.”
Truth.
Part Two: A Missing Package
Despite riding the emotional high from this much needed kick-start to Summer break (and the cooler nighttime temps from sleeping alone) by Friday, I was tired. I admit I lost it, just a little bit, when I discovered that an Amazon package had been delivered to a neighbor by mistake, and said neighbor (who remains a stranger) had not bothered to return it to me four entire days later. In the absence of another adult to talk to, I took this rage out in the form of teachable moments, explaining to whatever kids would listen that this is the definition of inconsiderate and the reason we are raising them to be better than that.
Note: I did get the package back, thanks to the Internet, after I went on a parent-style witch hunt on our neighborhood website that was all too reminiscent of standing at the top of the basement steps hollering, “Who has mommy’s Scotch Tape?!”
Can I get some solidarity here?
Part Three: Facebook Marketplace
Friday evening, out of nowhere, a Facebook message pops up that someone wants to buy a stroller I put for sale almost two months ago, and she can meet this evening. I wasn’t really in the mood to deal with another stranger that day, but it turns out the woman was actually very nice. She handed me a wad of cash which I could see included several ones, and said, “You can count it if you want,” and I said, “Oh it’s fine I trust you.” (Not because I have a reason to trust her, but at this point, I just didn’t care.)
It wasn’t until I had been home for almost an hour that I finally un-wadded the money to find that she had actually over-paid me by $10. I know. It’s only $10. But the item I sold was only $35, and all I could think of was that if I had over-paid $10 on a used stroller it would have eaten me up inside, especially a stroller that is currently on sale brand new at Target for only $50. I texted her immediately and within ten minutes had the cash in a stamped envelope already in the mailbox with the flag up.
I cannot tell you the relief I felt in that moment. Like, all the wrong that had been done to me from the stupid missing Amazon package sort of washed away. Certainly all the wrong done to John over the last several months didn’t wash away, but somehow, I had this kind of inner peace that the world had just been righted again.
Can I tell you how much I live for these moments?
I always have. I’ve written before about my weird and possibly genetic sense of good luck. And it is true, things come up Milhouse around here more often than they should, but after such a lengthy season of trudging through the emotional mud, I was blindsided by the sense of universal balance that settled on me just from putting some change in the mail to a stranger.
John came home later that evening. We had a lot to catch up on, but mostly he needed an adult on which to unload his emotional baggage from the week, and I didn’t even remember to tell him what happened. His trial isn’t over, but even on Friday night, the outcome was far less bleak than originally planned for.
Part Four: A Free Lunch
Today is Father’s Day. I didn’t even have the kids make a card. I didn’t remember to say anything until we got to church where three older women were the first to bestow appropriate greetings on the man who had made everyone’s breakfast, made three beds, and oversaw all four kids getting out of the house dressed.
I’m a horrible wife.
Also, I hate going out to brunch on Sundays period, let alone holidays. Hate dealing with crowds, and kids, and kids eating in their church clothes. But somehow it just seemed like the only option today, and so we ended up at The Famous Toastery where we waited less than 20 minutes to get a table, and went ahead and treated ourselves to mimosas first thing, because its Father’s Day, and why not.
After two out of four kids ordered off the adult menu and we had made about sixteen different substitutions to get everyone’s food just right and then had one incorrect meal swapped out for the right thing and consumed all the lemons and all the napkins and falling forks.
I exaggerate. Honestly. Brunch was a downright delight. Our server was superwoman who won me over immediately when she said Isaiah looks like a young Ryan Reynolds. She would have won me over eventually when she handed over the iPad to Eliott to show her how to customize her breakfast burrito and then at the last minute figured out how to finagle like three changes to our orders that would ultimately save us another $3 in up-charges.
While I’m waiting for the bill I’m already mentally coming up with a total so I don’t have to sit there doing actual math at the table trying to figure out the tip. I was prepared for an $80 tab. Our server returns with three other employees and announces, “Well, Happy Father’s Day to you sir, because someone screwed something up and apparently gave your ticket to another table.” It takes a second to process this news because I’m thinking maybe she’s being ironic and about to tell us, “It is going to be another several minutes before we can get you out of here.”
Nope.
She was trying to tell us we would not be paying for our lunch.
John immediately started scrounging in my wallet for some cash to at least leave a tip, and I was gathering-children-to-wash-hands and giving-instructions-on-the-take-home boxes and don’t-forget-my-sweater and don’t-leave-that-on-the-floor mode that it wasn’t until we were leaving the parking lot when it hit me.
“I think this is because I sent a Facebook lady some change in the mail when she overpaid me for a stroller on Friday.”
And you know what? I really do.
The UnderToad 