Dorothy . . . Peter Pan . . . The More Things Change . . .

Daughter #1’s more of a Peter Pan than I am. As independent as each of us is, neither one of us really wants to grow up. She was in town a couple of weeks ago, and every day seemed to bring a new ‘Toto-I-don’t-think-we’re-in-Kansas-any-more’ moment (is it okay to bounce metaphorically from Peter Pan to Wizard of Oz in the same paragraph?).

At that time, Daughter #2 talked about being in the sixth-grade band; and Daughter #1 seemed to accept that her sister was in sixth grade and even 'whoo-hooed' her role as the big dog on the intermediate school campus. Then Daughter #1 realized that her sister will 'grown up' and fighting in the jungles of the seventh grade next year.

‘That can’t be right. I was just in the seventh grade.” Well, maybe seven or eight years ago.

A friend, who helped me unpack when I moved to Fort Worth in 1990, has an older daughter who is a life-long friend of Daughter #1; and Daughter #1 regularly trades Facebook messages with her (she attends Stephen F. Austin State University; Daughter #1 is across the state at Texas Tech).

When my wife mentioned that the life-long friend’s baby brother, who Daughter #1’s known since birth, becomes a teenager this year, Daughter #1 challenges with ‘No way. I’m still a . . . ,’ and then backs down with a ‘when did everybody grow up?’

Our neighborhood -- where Daughter #1 grew up or at least where she kept celebrating birthdays -- is fairly transitional. Families have moved with job changes and schools have continued to open – and kids get shuffled around – to accommodate more families moving into our area. Change shouldn’t be new to her, and she always adapted well.

Unfortunately, her class of friends has seen tragic deaths throughout their school careers --parents killed in motorcycle accidents, parents dying unexpectedly from heart attacks and aneurysms, friends taken by cancer and killed in accidents, and classmates taking their own lives -- but I don’t think she was prepared as a newly crowned adult to mourn the slow death from cancer of a long-time friend’s dad.

Fortunately, life is good, and it does change. Daughter #1 loves to open Facebook, when she’s here, to show her mom the latest baby photos posted by some of her friends from high school. Her display is somewhere between the delight of a child with a new Barbie and the disgust of a teenager served liver when she realizes that girls her age – women – have children. Some are married now, some with husbands in Iraq, and some have begun careers, with rent payments, car payments, cell phone payments and insurance payments all their own.
Daughter #1 is slowly recognizing that her Dorothy has no ruby slippers to help return her to Kansas and that her Peter Pan has no Tinkerbell to keep the magic of Neverland (although, like me, she’ll keep clicking her heals together just to be sure).

But what doesn’t change? I crossed a small bridge during a recent walk – after Daughter #1’s ‘OMG-I’m-growing-up’ visit – and saw a teenage boy sitting on a large rock, not doing much of anything but throwing rocks in the water. His posture and his careless-but-sometimes-intense throws were mine about 35 years ago, when I sat on the Port Arthur seawall and threw rock after rock into the Intercoastal Canal.

If I would’ve asked the boy was he was doing, I’m sure he would’ve replied, ‘nuthin.’ But I almost guarantee that every rock – just like each rock I tossed – was labeled: girlfriend, school, college, car, parents, job, money, boredom, sex, drugs, drinking or – another apparently un-changeable – going to war.

When I crossed the bridge again, he’d moved, now to a nearby picnic table, where he stared at clouds while kids played on the toys of a nearby playground. He was sitting on the bench seat, leaning back with his elbows on the table, head tossed back and his face turned toward the sun. My picnic table – whether I walked from my rock on the seawall to Rose Hill Park or drove to Port Neches Park – was – like this young man’s – one more spot that wasn’t home. And every cloud that passed over had a rock namesake: girlfriend, school, college, car, parents, job, money, boredom, sex, drugs, drinking or going to war.

While I was weighing Daughter #1’s ‘life’s-coming-too-fast’ against my recognition that teen angst is eternal, I thought about the soul searching, life choices, missed opportunities, twists of fate, stupid comments, smart moves and the sheer luck of living. And then my IPod pulled up Jimmy Buffett’s ‘He Went to Paris.’

He went to Paris looking for answers
To questions that bothered him so
He was impressive, young and aggressive
Saving the world on his own

But the warm Summer breezes
The French wines and cheeses
Put his ambitions at bay
Summers and Winters
Scattered like splinters
And four or five years slipped away

Then he went to England, played the piano
And married an actress named Kim
They had a fine life, she was a good wife
Bore him a young son named Jim
And all of the answers and all of the questions
He locked in his attic one day‘
Cause he liked the quiet clean country living
And twenty more years slipped away

Well the war took his baby, bombs killed his lady
And left him with only on eye
His body was battered, his world was shattered
And all he could do was just cry
While the tears were falling, he was recalling
The answers he never found
So he hopped on a freighter, skidded the ocean
And left England without a sound

Now he lives in the islands, fishes the pilin’s
And drinks his green label each day
He’s writing his memoirs and losing his hearing
But he don’t care what most people say
Through eighty-six years of perpetual motion
If he likes you he’ll smile then he’ll say
Jimmy, some of it’s magic, some of it’s tragic
But I had a good life all the way

And he went to Paris looking for answers
To questions that bother him so

Dad-isms #3

8th-grade girls basketball, and daughter #1 is point guard, leisurely taking the ball for a stroll down the court. Very nice of her team and the opponents to wait on her. From up in the stands, I shout her name and yell, 'RUN!' She STOPS in the middle of the court and stares at me in the stands. After the game, I knew that I'd misplaced my priorities when I found myself saying, 'DON'T YOU EVER LISTEN TO ME AGAIN!'

My son's moving from Laredo to go to school and major in computer gaming software and live on his own in Austin. Daughter #1 keeps abandoning the dog she's supposed to be babysitting during winter break like it's some grandchild I've been waiting to spend 'quality' time with, and daughter #2 is . . . well, daughter #2.

So you can tell how far my Dad-isms have gone. Here's the last batch for awhile.

Yesterday’s over my shoulder, but I can’t look back for too long. There’s just too much to see waiting in front of me, and I know that I just can’t go wrong . . . Jimmy Buffett

Make good choices! . . . Jamie Lee Curtis in Freaky Friday

Just do it! . . . Nike

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails . . . John Maxwell (author)

The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority . . . Ken Blanchard

And more of mine:

SMILE! Enjoy life! Be happy.

Be positive. Avoid the negative. People need and are attracted to the positive and shy away from the negative (and it’s too easy to a grinch).

Problems don’t get better with time. Take care of them right away.

Take care of your business . . . now.

Set goals. Ask yourself, ‘what have I done today?’ to get what I want.

Ask for what you want. Nobody’s waiting around or trying to read your mind.

ROLE MODELS

A Pirate Legacy

Yes, I am a pirate, 200 years too late
The cannons don't thunder, there's nothing to plunder
I'm an over-40 victim of fate, arriving too late, arriving too late
- - A Pirate Looks at 40 as sung by Jimmy Buffett

A Pirate Looks at 40 is one of my all-time favorite songs; and, even though I've been on the straight and narrow most of my life (okay, all of my life . . . I'm pretty dull), I'm still waiting, at the drop of an eye-patch, to pick up a cutlass and plunder the nearest frigate.

Just like almost any kid, I thought my parents were the dullest people I'd ever met. Now that I know how dull children can make you, maybe, as Buffett sings, . . . it could me my own damn fault.

BUT I do think there are hints of a pirate legacy in family . . .

My dad cited his first taste of alcohol as a young kid in Kentucky eating sugar from the bottom of moonshine stills (gee, dad. wasn't that illegal?).

As a boxer, he often took on the 'champion' from whatever carnival might be passing through Mayfield (and probably Paducah). Except he knew that he would take the fall on Thursday, but then he'd be able to beat the champ on Friday, which, of course, set up the sell-out for Saturday night (the champ alway won in the ring, but my dad had money in his pocket).

My mother was eating a hamburger and fries in a Port Arthur cafe, when a would-be suitor plopped down in the booth across from her. As he talked, he reached for French fry, and she warned him not to touch her French fries. He laughed and reached for another fry. My mom, in her own swashbuckling way, swiped her knife off the table and stabbed the back of his hand . . . 'I told you not to touch my French fries.'

After my parents married and my dad went to work at Texaco in Port Arthur, his friends warned him the Cajun women sleep with knives under their pillows. He believed.

Role Models

Dad-isms #1

When my older daughter was in the 6th or 7th grade, she and her friends spent a lot of their weekend nights at a nearby roller skating rink. Stories soon came home about meeting boys and making out in dark corners. That's when I gave my now-famous 'If you give a mouse a cookie' speech to my daughter and her lip-locking friend about boys' not-so-secret desires (you know the story, 'If you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to ask for a glass of milk. When you give him the milk, he'll probably ask for a straw, etc.).

As my kids got older, I thought about what I'd like to leave with them (and what I'd already tried to dump on them) and developed my list of 'Dad-isms.' Dad-isms are quotes, lines from songs, advice I've received, advice I've given and just about any other bit of paternal preaching I could think of. From time to time, I'll share some with you (share with you? who's reading this besides me?).

Here's the first batch:

You gotta roll with the punches . . . George Bowden, Sr. (former boxer)

We've gotta roll with the punches. Learn to play all of our hunches; makin' the best of whatever comes your way. Forget that blind ambition and learn to trust your intuition; plowin' straight ahead come what may . . . Jimmy Buffett (Cowboy in the Jungle)

Be there; Play; Make Their Day; and Choose Your Attitude . . . FISH Philosophy (read the book)

If you sit by the river long enough, you will see the bodies of your enemies float by . . . Japanese proverb (that may be my favorite looking-back-at-life favorite)

Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in . . . Winston Churchill

And a couple of mine (sort of anyway) . . .

Just remember: they can't eat you.

You don't have to run faster than the bear, just faster than me? What happens if the bear's still hungry? If you start something, give it your best shot.

Role Models