IRISHMAN FOR HIRE

A few days ago, I woke up early in the morning with a pounding headache because I had slept in the wrong position again. It was too early to start my day, so I trudged down the stairs to the medicine cabinet, took some ibuprofen, stumbled half asleep back to my bedroom and climbed sleepily into my warm bed. I laid there for a while trying to find any comfortable position that might ease the pain. But eventually, I gave up and lumbered downstairs as the aroma of warm coffee being brewed wafted throughout the entire house.

As I stood in the kitchen and poured myself a cup of coffee, Stephanie looked at me, smirked and said, “You look like we did when we first had kids?”

“How’s that?” I asked as I stood there half awake, hair standing straight up and my head cocked to the side in an attempt to find a neck position that would stop the jackhammer in my brain.

“Like you haven’t had sleep for days,” she replied

“Great,” I said as I went into the living room and sat on the couch. “I look like a zombie. Thanks.”

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I used to play a game in college called “Bet the Bottle Cap.” It’s a simple game that is meant to be played in conjunction with Poker. Here is how you play: place a dollar in the side pot and then affix the bottle cap to your forehead. Once the cap is firmly in place, you cannot touch it. After every hand, if the bottle cap is still on your forehead, place another dollar in the side pot to continue the game. If the bottle cap falls off your head or if you touch the bottle cap, you lose. Last person with the bottle cap still on their head, wins the money.

Every once in awhile when I am watching a sporting event on television, I will open a beer bottle and affix the cap to my forehead to see how long it will stay. It isn’t under the same conditions as when I used to play “Bet the Bottle Cap” many years ago, but it makes me smile as I remember my old college days. It’s like a little trip down memory lane. The added bones these days is that every time I place a bottle cap on my forehead, my kids take the cap off my head and stick it to their own foreheads. Why is all of this important? Because it rained last Saturday!

Rainy days are an adventure in our house. We have two young children who are constantly underfoot and who vie for mine and Stephanie’s attention. We spend rainy days engaged in a multitude of activities and finding a few minutes in the day just for me is always a golden opportunity. It allows me to take a quick breather before “losing” again at games like Candy Land, Monopoly and Uno for the eighteenth time in a row.

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Stephanie and I slow danced and sang along with the band on Saturday night and as we did, I just let myself become immersed in the imagery of the lyric. In a throng of supporters underneath a sea of stars at the Comcast Center, Stephanie and I were dancing with each other while Darius Rucker sang “It Won’t Be Like This For Long” as though we were the only two people at the venue.

The soulful song about a Dad and his daughter enveloped my imagination as I swayed in time to the music. I smiled as I thought about him bringing his daughter home from the hospital and the sleepless nights that ensued as he adjusted to his new life as a parent. I empathized with him as he skipped four years ahead and recounted the fears and trepidations his daughter had around sleep and going to preschool. Vividly, I could see him shrugging his shoulders and asking the teacher for help as he tried to manage the ever changing world of his little princess. And as each chorus brought the reminders from his wife and the teacher not to worry because “it won’t be like this for long,” I could remember the reassurances Stephanie has given me along the way as well. “One day we’ll look back on this fondly and laugh,” she always reminds me and something tells me that one day, we will.

I was reveling in a moment of peace and tranquility with my wife. I was dancing under the stars and as the world seemed to fade away, the song took a new lyrical twist that jolted me out of my daydream:

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“Chloe, want to play Santa Claus?” I asked the other day as I was getting ready to shave.

“Yes!” Chloe responded as she ran to get her stool so she would have something to stand upon.

“Alright, I’ll meet you in there,” I said as I headed into the bathroom, took out my shaving stuff and started to run the hot water.

“Never mind, Dad,” she yelled at me as she waltzed past the bathroom a few minutes later and headed for the back door. “Josh and I are going to play in the backyard! See you later.”

The Santa Claus game started a couple of years ago when Chloe followed me into the bathroom one day and she watched me put shaving cream on my face. “You look like Santa Claus,” she said to me and as I looked at myself in the mirror, I had to agree with her. The shaving cream looked like the white, billowy beard of Father Christmas and before I knew what I was doing, I broke into my best impression of Saint Nick and had a conversation with Chloe as if I was the jolly old elf himself.

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One of the first acts we committed as parents was to count the fingers and toes of our children. Once all of their appendages had been accounted for, we started to examine our children to see what features they had received from us. Did they get my eyes? My Ears? My nose? Did they get any of my traits? Or did they get them all from Stephanie? And we were not the only ones who engaged in this ritual, our family members tried to account for what genetic qualities our children got from them as well.

As our children have grown up, Stephanie and I have often joked about which personality traits each of us gave to the children. The debate rages on over Joshua because he seems to have so many physical features and personality traits from both Stephanie and I. On the other hand, though, it has been firmly established by many of our friends and family members that Chloe got her beauty from her mother and her temperament as well as her humor from me.

The fun part of having these conversations is that we can pinpoint exactly which traits Stephanie got from each of her parents but because I am adopted, everyone wants to know from whom I get my idiosyncratic style. Is it genetic? Or is it environmental? And whenever the conversation is brokered, it leads to a lot of fun filled, zany and downright hilarious theories as to how I became the person I am today.

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Stephanie and I spent last Sunday night on the couch in front of the television. It was a chance for us to finally relax and decompress after a long weekend and as the evening was starting to get late, Stephanie said, “I’m going up to bed. Are you coming up?”

“Not right now. I’ll be up in a little bit,” I responded. “I am going to watch the end.”

“I had a lot of fun today, thank you.”

“Don’t thank me; it wasn’t what I had originally planned but what the heck? We went with the flow today and we had a lot of fun.”

“Well, it was a great day. Just what the doctor ordered but I am tired and need to get some sleep,” Stephanie said as she got up off the couch, gave me a kiss and headed upstairs to bed.

I continued to watch the show but my mind started to wander as I thought about the day we had just spent together. The kids and I started Mother’s Day off by making breakfast in bed for Stephanie. The children helped me make an omelet and coffee. Stephanie was awake when we delivered the food to her and while she ate, the kids inundated her with many, many cards that they had made for her.

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“Dad,” Josh whispered as he jostled my shoulders. “Wake up, it’s time to go.”

“What?” I asked as I rolled over, rubbed my eyes and peered at Josh through the slits of my barely open eyelids.

“Wake up, Dad, it’s time to go,” he excitedly whispered again.

“What time is it?”

“5:30”

“Go get dressed. I’ll be downstairs in five minutes,” I said as I stared at the clock and rubbed my face with my hands. As I sat up on my end of the bed, I was beginning to hate this idea. Unfortunately, it was my idea and although it sounded great when I was stuck in traffic on Friday afternoon on my way home, at 5:30 a.m. on Sunday morning, I was regretting my decision. I am not a morning person, especially on the weekends, and I am not a fisherman but Josh loves to fish.

His Uncle Paul takes him fishing when Paul comes to visit. Last fall, the cub scouts had a fishing day at a local pond and Josh had the best time fishing with his friends. So I thought about the two of us fishing together when I got caught in traffic on my way home. Work has been hectic lately and I have been at the office a lot over the past few weeks. There is a lot to get done before the end of the Fiscal Year, so I have been home less than usual at night and our weekends have been extremely busy over the past month.

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A few months ago, Josh and Chloe were playing with their toys in the living room. Chloe got bored with her own toys and decided to wreak havoc on Josh’s construction project. As Chloe was about to knock over the building he was making with his blocks, Josh made one last attempt to warn her against it, “Chloe, if you knock it down, I’m going to hit you!”

“Josh,” I said abruptly in response to his statement. Josh turned quickly and stared at me with a ghostly expression because he had forgotten that I was sitting in the chair behind him and heard what he had said to his sister. “We don’t threaten to hit.”

But before he could say anything in his defense, his right arm came up and grabbed the back of his left arm as he screamed, “Oooowwwww!”

As I was talking to Josh about threatening his little sister, Chloe exacted a quick, severe and resounding pre-emptive strike of her own; she bit him! The tears welled up in his eyes as the electrical shock of having been bitten coursed painfully throughout Josh’s body. Stephanie came into the room to see what was happening as I tried to console Josh and scold Chloe at the same time. In the middle of the black and blue welt that was developing on his arm where Chloe had bit him was a trickle of blood where she had broken the skin with her teeth. Stephanie took him into the bathroom to clean out the cut while I took Chloe to the time-out chair.

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I was beginning to have one of those days as I stared down the hundredth driver who had just ignored my turn signal. I was trying to switch lanes so I could get to a local restaurant to pick up my wife. My turn signal had been on for the past fifteen minutes and every time I tried to move into the left lane, other drivers would do whatever they could to make sure that I did not get in front of them.

My kids were getting impatient in the backseat as I pulled the corner and headed for the intersection. As I looked around, I saw the sign that said my lane had to turn right and head back onto the highway. If I was unable to switch lanes, I was going to have to start this process all over again.

I rolled down my window and tried to get the attention of the woman in the car next to mine. When she finally looked at me and rolled down her window, I said, “I am sorry to bother you but I have been trying to get in your lane for the past fifteen minutes. I have to go straight across the intersection and I can’t in this lane. When the light turns green, can I get in front of you?”

“Sure, not a problem,” she said as she rolled up her window.

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I pulled into the parking lot, put the car in park and turned off the engine. I turned around in my seat to face the kids, “I have to get these bank charges taken care of today, so I need you to be on your best behavior.”

“Can I bring my DS inside, Dad?” Josh asked.

“Yes.”

“Can we get lollipops?” Chloe asked.

“If you behave, you can get lollipops.”

“Yeah, we can have lollipops, Josh. I want a blue one, Dad.”

“Are you going to be on your best behavior?”

“Yes.”

“Then you can have a blue one.”

And with the understanding firmly established, I unbuckled my seat belt and got out of the car. I helped each of the kids get out of the car as well and we headed into the bank together. I went over to the manager’s office and could see that she was busy, so we all sat in the chairs just outside her office and next to the cubicles of the other bank employees.

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