[Please note: I started writing this post on the day before Father's Day. Kiernan's out of school now, so the editing has taken me a few days.]
We spent last night and a good part of Saturday in a hotel in Marina del Rey. Wendy was down there being her awesome self, presenting and training on collaboration. The folks that booked her for the gig put her up in a sweet room that included something called "Club Level Accommodations" and so she encouraged Kiernan and me to join her for the evening. Well, no thanks honey. We've been to Marina del Rey. It's like an hour away. Why would we want to drive down there on a Friday night? Whatever.
"Free food all day. Free wine and beer. Free candy. Free desserts. All you want."
Kiernan and I looked at each other and nodded. "Well, if it'll make your job easier, then we'll do it."
After about fifteen breakfasts--it really should be illegal to eat chocolate croissants and bagels with lox, capers, tomatoes, cream cheese, and red onions at the same seating...but it's not so HA!--father and son headed down to check out the pool. Headed down. Waddled down. Whatever.
Kiernan has become an amazing swimmer. I'll try to put up some pictures or videos of him at swim class in the next couple of days to show you what I mean. It really is astounding. But this post isn't about that, since as soon as we got down there he refused to swim until I joined him in the pool and then proceeded to spend the entire time pouncing on me and demanding I catapult him out of the water. Ugh. Really? I just want to sit and sip the cappuccino I brought from Club Level Accommodations. But noooooooo. I was about to raise an objection when Kiernan tossed me the Good Dad Handbook. Page 17 was dog-eared, and it clearly said, "When Dad's presence is requested in the pool he is to jump in without hesitation and allow his kid to pounce upon him at will." There is a provision in the appendix of the Good Dad Handbook that allows for him not to jump in immediately if he is playing a game that calls for his son to push him in. In case you were wondering.
Oh well. It was slightly overcast and a little chilly--this is down at the Pacific before the burnoff--but Wendy had assured me the pool was well heated. So...jump.
Yeeeesh! NOT well heated.
We set about to playing. "WHIRLPOOL!" Kiernan demanded. "OR EJECT!"
Whirlpool involves me taking hold of him as I stand in the water and spinning him around at a high velocity. Eject involves me throwing him in the air as high as I can so that he can then cannonball back down into the pool. Not that I have to explain these really. These are pool games played by fathers and sons through the ages. I Whirlpooled him a few times and Ejected him once or twice before I noticed something a little weird.
The little girl who'd been swimming at the other end of the pool was now very close to us. Uncomfortably close, actually. And smiling goofily. She didn't say anything, just smiled and then laughed a little. I tossed Kiernan into the air again, she laughed again, said "Sorry!" and then went swimming away.
We went back to playing.
She came back, and this time another girl who'd just arrived with a person I assume was her grandmother jumped in and came swimming right over, laughing with glee.
"Eject, Dad!" Kiernan exclaimed, not noticing the girls. Or ignoring them. "Come on! Eject!"
I threw him into the air again, and the new little girl beamed. "That's fun!"
I smiled at her but kept what distance I could, given that these two little kids had no sense of personal space whatsoever. Maybe this is true of most little kids, or maybe that shorts out when they get in the pool. I don't know, but I did hear her grandmother, reclined in one of the pool chairs behind me say the girl's name in that low cautious voice that says you're not really sure how to proceed with your kid in public. You want her to back off from the nice man, but you're not quite ready to say those words out loud.
Kiernan demanded Eject again, and I obliged. The new girl giggled again, and then she said something that knocked me off kilter for a bit.
"That's why I want a dad," she said, still beaming. "Because dads are fun!"
What the hell do you say at that point? I mean what the hell do you say?
Her grandmother wedged words into the gap for me, luckily. "Yes, but you have an uncle. Uncle Peebo will be here in a little bit."
"I know but--"
"Uncle Peebo will be here in a little bit," she said, her voice firming up. "He'll play with you in the pool when he gets here. Come here." The grandmother drew the little girl and her little friend to the other side of the pool.
Ignoring for a second that I haven't heard the name Peebo since the theatrical release of Beauty and the Beast (yes I know it's spelled Peabo), I felt so out of sorts at this moment. "That's why I want a dad." That's what she said. It wasn't a childish demand made with stamped foot. Not, "I want a dad!" said like Veruca Salt demanding a bean feast. This was clearly something she had thought about, and probably discussed with grandma or somebody. The word "that's" at the beginning of the statement told me that. My mind reeled. What was her situation? Single mom? No parents? Two moms? What? Totally none of my business, even though she had tried her darnedest to make it so, but still...what?
And what should I have done? Invited her into our game? Of course not. That's not the world we live in, really. I've been in plenty of situations where strange kids glom onto me. It happens with dads all the time. You're goofing off with your son at the park and a couple kids run up and insinuate themselves without awkwardness into the game. Soon they are aping what your kid does, attacking or tackling you or whatever. But this was the hotel pool. I'm a strange man in a swim suit and she's a little girl. Dads are fun, but they're not crazy.
A few minutes passed and a new group of folks in swim suits made their way down the stairs to the pool. A woman about my age, a woman about half that, and two little boys. One about three and one, I don't know, maybe five. The five year old was clearly watching us, and smiling. He jumped right in and made his way over to us as Kiernan dunked me under the water. Then I ejected him once more.
The new little boy clapped. "That was great!"
I bowed, slapping the water theatrically with the backs of my hands.
"You're funny!"
"Landon," his mother said with that note of caution. "Come over here." Landon splashed away.
"Whirlpool, Dad." Kiernan had totally ignored the little girls, but he noticed the boy. I could tell by his tone. "Or eject. Whichever you want!"
Eject. Landon zipped back over, clapping again.
"Landon," his mother said again, that same tone. He ignored her this time. We continued to play while he stayed in orbit, acknowledging him without making actual contact. After several minutes of this his mom firmly called him over to the side, informing him that his little brother wanted to check out the jacuzzi and it was his turn and she couldn't be two places at once. He paddled over to her somewhat reluctantly and climbed out of the pool, heading up the stairs to the jacuzzi area.
"Sorry," his mom said to me. "He's used to our community pool where everybody just kind of...you know." She made a hand gesture that reminded me of packing a huge snowball, but I got what she meant.
"No worries," I said, waving off her apology. "I don't mind at all."
After a time up at the jacuzzi Landon dragged his family down to the pool again, jumping in and immediately paddling over to us. Kiernan invited him to help dunk me under the water. He gladly accepted the invitation and under I went. I spent a fair amount of time swimming away from the two of them, being chased, letting them catch me, and getting dunked under the water. Landon's mom called him over again, saying she wanted to take a picture to send to Landon's dad. It seemed to me she was making a point of bringing up Dad, making it clear to all that there was a dad in the picture. She then apologized again.
"Sorry! Landon's dad is in a meeting, so..."
"Again. No worries. No need to apologize."
She shrugged and smiled. "Moms are no fun."
"Not true," I disagreed pleasantly and turned to do Whirlpool again. Moms are plenty of fun. I've seen Kiernan have a ball with his mom. But when it comes to pools and roughhousing with your boy, I realized she did kind of have a point. She was wearing a bathing suit, and the thing was bone dry, and in a way this off-the-cuff statement was her way of proclaiming that it was going to stay that way. She had no intention of getting in the pool. Period.
I was immediately transported back to Pennsylvania, and summer visits to the little coal town where his folks all lived. I loved seeing my Bubba and Pap-Pap, and my cousins, but I was always champing at the bit to get to the pool. Aunt Doris had a pool and I was never so happy than when I was spending an entire summer day splashing around in it. Diving board. Water slide. Rafts and water toys aplenty. I loved that place. I have this memory of the pool space being excavated many, many years ago. In my memory the hole being dug seems impossibly big, and it follows that I remember the pool as fairly big, with a respectable deep end, but I'm sure as with most childhood memories this one is out-sized. No matter, the memory of the fun isn't.
Dad had to spend a certain amount of time chewing the fat with his sisters and their husbands, and those cans of Genessee beer they served weren't going to drink themselves, but I just have this strong sense memory that when I wanted him in the pool to play, he was in the pool to play. Splashing. Rating dives. Playing king-of-the-raft. Forcing me to swim him across the pool on piggy back and commanding in a goofy voice, "Fwim! Fwim!" I just remember hours upon hours of playing in the pool with my dad. So when my son demands I jump in the pool and play, how can I refuse?
Whether it be a day chock-full-of-swimming with my dad, or learning to ride horses and camp and hunt with my other dad, I have to look to that little girl's words and smile, her situation notwithstanding. Dads are fun. And this isn't just a fact...
It's a mandate.
Happy Father's Day, all.
