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The Truth Is…
Posted in The Kitchen Sink on Fri, March 05, 2010
I forgot my kids at school yesterday. Completely. At 3:40 p.m., almost an hour after they were released, the school tracked me down here in my office, (I wear headphones to drown out the noise). The lady said, “Ummm…Mr. Martin, we have your sons in the office.”
I jumped up. Oh Crap! Son of a…
Actually,I think I thought something else but you get the picture. “I’ll be right there.” Christy was off doing some stuff with her sister on a much-needed break. She’d left me with strict instructions. Even texted me a little after noon to remind me. This one was ALL me.
Four minutes later, I walked in the office, “Hey guys.”
“Daaaaaaaad…what happened?” They were not impressed.
“Well…” I hugged them, kissed them and laughed. “Truth is…I totally forgot you.”
They shook their heads. “Thanks, Dad.” My boys are pretty well adjusted. Didn’t seem to ding them too much. They shrugged it off. We got home, they got a snack, hit their bikes and they’d forgotten it (I think) in five minutes. They don’t seem overly wounded. No therapy in the future. I don’t expect to see grades dropping below a scorable level.
I, on the other hand, walked back in here, sat down below a sign hanging in my office which reads, Imagination is Evidence of the Divine, and thought, I’m a total piece of crap. What kind of dad forgets his children? Then I looked here, into this white-paged world where I dream and where I get lost and where time doesn’t follow me and where words create entire worlds and I wondered if maybe, when they’re older and they read all this stuff and they realize that dad day-dreamed for a living—like actually gets paid to dream stuff up—then maybe they’ll understand. Forgive me. Laugh. Maybe they’ll get lost in one of my stories, forget the time, and maybe they’ll find their own phone is ringing. It’s the school.
Guys…you’re not really old enough to understand this. One day, yes, but put this in perspective, this morning you all walked to school dressed as your favorite Dr. Seuss characters – Fox in socks and the King in stilts. I’d be willing to bet that Dr. Seuss lived in a white-paged world, too. A world where he didn’t, and couldn’t’, live halfway—one foot in the screen, one foot on the desk. That doesn’t work. It’s an all or nothing thing. Same is true with your heart but you’ll figure that out soon enough.
Yesterday, I was in here working on the book that will follow Mountain. Novel #8. A good story I think. Maybe my toughest yet. Certainly ambitious. You might wonder, ‘But Dad…come one. We’re your own flesh and blood? How do you forget your own sons?’ The best answer I can give is Eric Liddell? Remember the picture of Eric running? Somedays…like yesterday, that’s me writing.
I hope when you find the thing that you do, the thing God made you to do on this earth, that you jump through the screen. Completely. Both feet. A total Peter Pan. And, when you do, and time is a casualty (which it always is), I hope you throw your head back and run like Eric. It’s a good place.
One bit of advice—when you get there, if your phone rings, don’t send it to voice mail and check it an hour later. Answer it on the first ring. Your children will thank you.
Excellent thoughts and msg to your boys as their future selves. I always pray that God fills the gaps in my parenting and erases the memories of my goofs.
I’ve always told my boys, “Take the good stuff your mom and dad’s parenting and remember it when you have children of your own. Hit the delete button on the other stuff.” One of my sons is a daddy now and it’s great to see him using the good stuff and deleting the bad. However, he’s also making good stuff of his own and serving up some things that his little girls will have to delete :-)
My kids call it “The Bad Mother Stories”. The four of them are all grown up and often at family gatherings they will bring up one or two and laugh… winking at me as they tell them.
My best (or worst) Bad Mother Story is this one; it’s called She Left Us At The Bank! One day I was in line at the drive thru bank. My youngest was 3 and decided he had to use the bathroom, now! There was no way out of the line… My 7 year old daughter said, “Mom, just let us go in and I’ll help him. I agreed, but told her to wait inside the front door and I’d come around to get them. Unbelievably, they returned, forgetting the part about waiting for me to drive around. The line was long and we waited… it was the first of the month yet, only one teller was working the window. Then, my daughter decided She had to go and could not wait. We had a TV in the car and all this drama was unfolding to the tune of the Lion King. So, out of the van they went, back to the bathrooms… I made her promise to wait at the front door this time. I was one car from the front of the line and just knew I’d be done before she was. Finally, I was there....but, horrors, I was overdrawn! My mind whirled… how could this be? Oh, no! I had to get home and figure it out. I was in tears and wished the silly Lion King would just stop. As I went home, thinking, and trying to figure out How the money had disappeared, my phone rang… Uh, Maam? This Is Betty from the Bank… Your children are here… Oh, My Gosh! Oh, No! I screeched to a stop and turned the van around… The Lion King played on as I tore back to town. The kids were coloring and sucking on lollipops. Not trauma… no tears. They looked up and said, “Oh, Hi Mom.” God Bless the Ladies at the bank! Thank God for small town life!
So, Charles, just know that someday, as you are sitting down to a lovely Thanksgiving Dinner, one of your sons will inevitably wink at the others, nudge his wife and say,"Kids, let me tell you about the time your Grandpa forgot us at school!”
The legacy has begun!
Great story Charles - You are truly blessed - family, career, faith - and this story is not unlike what we readers would experience from one of your characters!
Sounds like you were experiencing “flow”. If you get a chance, check out Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Most of us have experienced it at some time but sounds like you live in a perpetual state of “flow”. Lucky you!