It’s the solstice. Happy solstice!
It’s fathers day! And I’m visiting one of my sons!
But first, traveling means laundromats. I visited one a couple of days ago and it displayed this bit of wisdom, relating to my strong feelings about fitted sheets:
When I dropped my older son off at college six years ago, I wasn’t prepared for how big and abrupt the change was. I had seen him nearly every day of his life for eighteen years and suddenly he was… gone. Five hundred or so miles away, sure, but more than that I don’t do well with telephones and though he’s happy to text or email, his communication style is minimal and he didn’t come to visit very often. To compound matters, a couple of years later I sold the old family home to move to one with a swimming pool as my sons both loved the water. It wasn’t very far away (eight miles, I think) but it meant that when he was in town, he was more convenient to his friends to just stay at his mother’s house. Then he finished his BS degree then his MS degree, then got a job at Epic Systems (the electronic medical records folks) in Wisconsin while I moved to Hawaii. He’s busy with his new career, and 4,000 miles is a long way, and the Pacific is a big ocean, so we haven’t seen much of each other.
I hadn’t thought of it being fathers day when I planned the trip. I also didn’t realize just how big his new employer was (about 13,000 employees) or that I was scheduled to be here for the “Epicnic,” their annual company-wide picnic. M thoughtfully got us tickets. This is one room of many in one building of many, and most of the event was outdoors, so you can get the idea of just how large an event it was:
Being a father was the coolest thing ever. I’m glad I waited until I was older, as I would have made a crap parent in my 20’s. I feel a lot of nostalgia and loss when I see my children all grown up, but I have to remind myself that my conscious goal when I became a parent was to raise my children to be independent and curious, not to be my buddies in my old age or even to be “good family.” I’m happy that they’re both doing well and finding their own way. I hope they never forget that I’ll be there for them until I die, and I hope that they reflect fondly on their childhood experiences, but mostly I just hope that they find happiness and fulfillment in their lives.
—2p