Passage

My youngest daughter turned 18 this month. She most probably will stay home for a few more years to go to school so we are not quite empty-nesters yet. But the next click of the stopwatch of our lives has been set.

It has been some 28 years now since the term 'daughter' has been the focal point of my life, and I can't help feeling a bit nostalgic, a bit of trepidation, a bit of relief....a conglomeration of feelings difficult to put in writing.

Marriage and daughters came in the same breath. I was a single, lonely bachelor eking out a strange random life when I met my wife and her infant daughter. Loving the daughter, the instincts of being a father, of her need for a father, all came easy. Not so easy came being a husband. Learning sacrifice, learning honesty, learning tenderness, learning how to make a living, and transitioning to an adult existence....it was difficult and painful at times. My wife suffered from my growing pains, our marriage constantly churning and shifting and peculating as I learned every mistake a husband could make (I hope I learned them all!!!!).

Soon a second daughter came along, again...the fatherhood part the easy part of things. Watching the girls grow, taking them to the park, to soccer and swimming, birthday parties. Reading and watching movies. Teaching them, letting them drive my truck at the dump, letting them shoot rifles and fish and going on vacation. Daughters were my life and my life was my daughters. And they were so easy to love, and so sweet, and the work of being a Father was oh so hard and oh so rewarding.

10 years later, my youngest arrived. Sweet and needing love, hard work, hugs and more hugs and a life time of daughter hugs, tears, owwies, Dr. Visits, school plays, recitals, talks, church activities, report cards, puppies, hamsters, boys at the door. With the 10 year gap it seemed like Fatherhood would last forever, and in a way it did...but forever has an ending, and the ending is not too far away now.

This part of me, Fatherhood, I'd like to think I wore it well, or the best I could. And I liked it, and I will miss it. And now there are Grandchildren, but the role is not the same, the role has changed, and the role is not so clear to me now.

The stopwatch has clicked and I start a new race, and I don't know what is next, but I gingerly move on.

Life, this great adventure.

Cheers, nca

Downton Abbey

Viewers note....Downton Abbey returns to PBS January 8, 2012. This is a really great series. Catch up on last season starting tonight and see what I mean  :)

Cheers, nca

DEFACED BOOK

What part of  the term 'Social Network' makes me think I can ever properly inhabit virtual worlds like 'Facebook' or 'Linkedin'. Let's face it, I have been and always will be socially challenged. Well, sure...here I am posting to the blog sphere. And I have been a member of both 'Facebook' and 'Linkedin', and some other social networks from time to time. But I never truly fit in on those sites.

From early in my youth, living in a large family of 9 in a little three bedroom two batch house I have been awkward in any situations with more then a handful of people. Socially I am more a observer than a partaker. I love people and personality in small group settings and small doses. But at a party I am as awkward as a nun in a strip club.

The blog works ok because my actual audience is small, and my real audience is even smaller. My audience is the few people that are actually linked to this. The real audience is probably really just myself. Like a diary, writing makes me feel better, it helps me get ideas of my chest, I enjoy it and always have. There is the occasional exhibitionist side of me...but for the most part that gets suppressed by my hermit tendencies.


The main problem for me is 'small talk'. My 'small talk' skills are sorry and weak. I never remember jokes. I love puns, because that is really playing with words which is really writing (poetry), and I'm good with that. But the short interesting tidbits and fascinating subjects and intriguing inquiries completely abandon me at parties. And what comes out on my FACEBOOK entries reflects that too. I get a lot of silence and ? and odd replies on my posts... I never get the 20 posts my daughters get when they post some cute saying or request for advice. Nor should I. The things my mind comes up with just do not work in the social setting.

Puns, innuendos, double entendres, and sarcasm don't seem to fit in well socially. They sometime work in smaller groups, but in larger social networks they fizzle. 

I guess I still get enough out of the social sites to warrant visiting from time to time. It is fun to learn things about my daughters and friends via these networks. But being a shadow lurking in the background makes me feel a lot like I do at parties and other social gatherings...a wall flower or voyeur, there but not really there. I understand why people love social networks, and more power to them, I wish I was more socially adept.

I am who I am.

Cheers, nca