work

My Dad’s Retirement

Work, for my dad, started early—in life and in the day. He grew up on a hog farm in Lewisburg, Ohio. He helped with the hard work of the farm, and my grandparents paid him and his siblings for the work that they did. He went to college, taught, got a master’s degree and taught some more. He was good at his work, but he never let it define him. Case in point: In 1982, he started working for McGraw-Hill Book Company. I have postcards from the early 80s from places like New York City—places my dad traveled for work. I remember going to the airport with him, getting on his plane and stepping into the cockpit. I remember a pilot giving me my own pilot wings. I remember watching his plane leave the airport and I remember the excitement of postcards in the mail. I don’t know if I simply associate Harry Chapin’s “The Cat’s in the Cradle” with my dad’s decision to leave his district manager job or if the song truly influenced him but he did leave it after three years. And most of his career, from 1985 to 2013, was spent with Great Oaks Institute of Technology and Career Development, most recently as Vice President of Business Operations. He did a lot of good there.

In June, he retired.

We attended a banquet for all the Great Oaks retirees late this spring. His speech made me teary.

And then in June, Kyle from San Francisco, and Katy, Tom and Colleen from North Carolina, came to town to celebrate.

These were some of the best summer days and nights.

We celebrated many things that week. We had dinner at A Tavola followed by cake and gifts at our house to celebrate Father’s Day and my mom’s birthday.

Our immediate family toasted and gifted my dad after dinner at Troy’s Cafe. My mom gave him two engraved bricks that both say “But it’s Baseball! Gary Gebhart”—one’s at home, the other, at Great American Ball Park.

For weeks beforehand my mom gathered one word from people who know my dad—one word that describes him. She then made The List.

The List
caring
major league
sincere
genuineness
animates
thoughtful
worker
lists
builder
fanatical
awesome
smiley
OBT
stupendous
committed
loyal
trustworthy
quick-witted
magnanimous
friendly
organized
considerate
realistic
smiling
farmer
finisher
comfortable
conscientious
industrious
tenacious
Kotter
nice
loving
egalitarian
friends
baseball
glasses
passionate
kind
right
quick
interesting
helpful
respectful
genuine
witty
cute
card-maker
dedicated
baseball guru
photographer
inspirational
detailed
pliable
humorous
high-fives
perspicacious
dependable
late
funny
brotherly
Xenia
generous
Carnac the Magnificent
courteous
kind-hearted
diligent
fun
sports guru
brilliant
hospitable
family
supportive
selfless
beloved

The next day family, friends and colleagues attended a party at my parents’ house.

My dad and brother-in-law spent days preparing Detling Field for a ballgame. We played a bit but then …

a downpour.

Still, an enjoyable day, complete with Eli’s BBQ sandwiches for all.

Now my parents are both retired. My dad still works, but it’s work of his choosing. He gardens. He works in the yard. He works out. He attends services at First Unitarian Church of Cincinnati. He volunteers at the Freestore Foodbank. He tutors a kindergartener once a week at South Avondale Elementary School. Every week he and my mom go on a date—Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Findley Market, a concert in a coffee shop. Next weekend they’re going to Colonial Williamsburg to see the Threads of Feeling exhibit with my grandma and my sister and her family. They went to Hawaii.

My dad stopped by the other day, after tutoring, just to hang out, to play tickle monster with the kids, to be beat in Bingo. This time for him is so incredibly well-deserved. And I’m just so thankful to be a part of it.

“Don’t simply retire from something; have something to retire to.” —Harry Emerson Fosdick

Interruptions While Editing

I’m in the middle of a huge editing project. (Every page in that almost-1,000-page stack is filled with 10-point type, single spaced.) When tackling this same project in the past, I’ve only worked on it after the kids have gone to bed. This year, to avoid 2am bedtimes, I’ve started immediately after dinner. I’m not sure why, in the past, I’ve felt an obligation to continue changing diapers, playing Candy Land and reading picture books once Andy was home. Asking him to take over has made this project easier and me, a more sane person. It’s been a good lesson: That it’s OK to stop, hand over, let things go, allow the dust bunnies in the corners to sit a while longer.

I’m also trying to do some editing during the day. But, I’m often interrupted. To illustrate:

• “MOMMY! I HAVE A BOOGER!” (I look up to find Owen standing in front of me with, indeed, a huge booger on the tip of his finger.)

• “Can I have a snack?” (Sophie. I get her a small bowl of applesauce. Resume editing.) “Can I have cinnamon on my applesauce?” (I get her cinnamon. Resume editing.) “Can I have some milk, please?” (I get her milk. Resume editing.) “I need a napkin!” (I get her a napkin. Resume editing.) “I need more milk. Please.” (Give up editing.)

• “My train. My train! MOMMY! FIX MY TRAIN!” (James then falls into a sobbing heap on the floor as he can’t get his Thomas train back on its tracks. I then spend five minutes myself trying to get said train—and freight cars—back on their tracks. Only to then be told that it’s going in the wrong direction.)

• “MOMMY! James keeps calling me a cat! I’m NOT A CAT, James! I’m O.w.en.!” (Can’t resume editing until I convince James that Owen is, indeed, not a cat. And can’t resume editing until I convince Owen that James no longer believes he’s a cat.)

• “What ya doing, Mommy?” (Sophie. Who has climbed up on my bed, aka my desk. Even though Andy is home and she is supposed to be with him. I explain.) “Oh.” (She stares.) “Can I help?” (I tell her no. Explain why. She stares.) “What do all those letters say?” (I tell her what the book is about.) “I can tell you the letters if you want. I know them!” (Thank her. Ask if she’d like to have a tea party with her dolls in her room.) “What do all those marks mean?” (Explain editing marks.) “Can I have your red pen when you’re done?” (I yell for Andy.)

• OWEN JUST TOOK MY TRAIN! OWEN JUST TOOK MY PERCY! That’s MY Percy, Owen! NO! GIVE. IT. BACK. (Sob.) Owen took my Percy!” (Editing is then interrupted every 10 minutes for the timer rule. Someone gets Percy. The other person gets to push the buttons on the microwave to set the timer for 10 minutes. When the timer rings, the two switch. It’s incredibly effective, except that my work is interrupted every 10 minutes.)

• silence (Something is wrong. I have to stop and check. Can almost guarantee James is sneaking some sort of food he shouldn’t be eating.)

• “MOMMY! You have to come upstairs RIGHT NOW. It’s-so-important-it’s-just-if-you-don’t-come-up-here-right-now-it’s-going-to-be-really-really-bad.” (I run upstairs. All seems fine. I ask Sophie what’s wrong.) “Can you brush my dolly’s hair?”

• (I’m sitting in bed, editing while listening to the kids laugh and scream outside my open window—my mom once told me about cassette tapes sent to soldiers with the recorded sound of children’s laughter, how popular they were, how needed. I then hear intense stomping on the hardwood stairs.) “Mommy! I have a special flower for you!” (I’m gifted a little white flower from our backyard tree—two of the petals ripped.) “Smell it!” (I do. I look at the face smiling up at me. Beaming, really. And I’m reminded that sometimes, sometimes, I love the interruptions.)

“The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s own or real life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life.” —C.S. Lewis

Solo Parenting

I took the kids to Skyline for dinner tonight. Randomly Owen and James started yelling out Reds baseball player names, including Jay Bruce and Johnny Cueto, with great gusto. For Christmas, my dad gave James framed pictures of baseball players to hang in his room. My dad often reminds Owen and James the names of the players. I’m sure this is where the spouting of names came from but I have no idea why it happened in the middle of dinner tonight. But with the snow still falling as we ate, and all of us in dire need of baseball weather, it was insanely cute. So I grabbed my phone and recorded it.

I have no idea why there’s (a) no sound and (b) why it’s posting as a picture and not a video.

If Andy were here, I’m sure he could fix it. Just like he could fix the toilet upstairs that is suddenly constantly running. For now I open the lid and jiggle a wire forcing the stopper to close every time someone flushes. I’m sure there is a better (and easier) way to handle this.

Andy’s been out of town since early Thursday afternoon. And he won’t be back until late Wednesday afternoon.

Seven days.

Six nights.

It’s gone better than I expected. But it’s a long time.

He’s been gone for good reason. He spent several days in Florida, visiting with extended family. And now he’s in Denver, for work.

In some ways, I feel more on top of things. Knowing I’m in charge of everything, and I don’t have anyone else to fall back on, I make sure things get done. I worry too much to let things slide.

Still, Owen’s wearing a pajama top covered in heart stickers in the video/picture. It was a battle I chose not to fight. Owen and James also are wearing their snow boots (because it’s snowing, of course) but sans socks. I’d like to say that was another battle I chose not to fight but in reality, it was a shortcut I insisted on.

I think about all the mamas and papas out there who do this on their own, without any support from the other biological parent, always. Or the ones whose spouse/partner travels for work, or is away for months at a time, with the military. I admire you. And I’m sorry. I imagine posts like these are hilarious or infuriating (or, perhaps, both). It’s a week. One small week.

Still. I look forward to not being the only one running up the stairs every five minutes at bedtime. Sometimes, for good reason: a dirty diaper. Chapped/bleeding lips. A dropped Piglet. But the other times: “It’s important, Mommy!” “What’s important?” “I don’t know. But don’t leave.” Or, “Which engine is this?” while pointing to an engine in a Thomas book. Or, “I forgot to make a mask for Emma today!”

The calories I burn, running up those stairs … it’s how I’m justifying the popcorn drizzled with truffle oil and covered in parmesan cheese, which I’m eating right now.

And in some ways, it’s nice. Andy hates the smell of truffle oil. And now I can eat it without complaint. I can not watch basketball (although I should point out “Peach Baskets”—my bracket—is currently ranked fourth out of 240 entries). And not once in the past five days have I encountered a bathroom sink full of little hairs, which is what I always encounter after Andy shaves.

But then, I like arguing about the merits of truffle oil. And it’s weird to not have basketball on in March. And washing those little hairs down the sink isn’t all that bad, really.

There’s a reason they say absence make the hearts grow fonder.

I miss him. I miss us. All of us, all the ways we work and don’t work together as a family of five.

Soon. (And for that, I know, I’m lucky.)

“Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.” —Kahlil Gibran

Work

Sophie knows that Andy goes to work every day. And that he works on a computer every day. And that his work earns our family money every day.

She attends a Montessori preschool and the word “work” is used often. So she also understands work as an activity she pulls off of a shelf and takes to a small rug to complete.

But I don’t think she quite understands my work. She certainly doesn’t consider the stay-at-home-mom work I do every day as work. And I don’t want her to think of my taking care of her as “work,” even though every once in awhile I secretly would like her to know that the reason she has food every day and clean clothes every day and a bath (most) days is because of the “work” Andy and I do.

But I also have other work, freelance editing and writing work. I’ve tried to explain this work to her. But she simply thinks (and tells people) that my job is playing on the computer. Lately, however, my editing work has been a bit more old-fashioned—I’ve been editing on paper, with a red pen. And having grown tired of all-nighters (something I was able to do quite easily in college, but has become increasingly hard for me the older I get), I’ve been trying to do more of this work during the day, while the boys nap. Sophie is intrigued by this work. And after hearing me say “no” for the 10th time to her request to “help” me with my work (which invariably involves drawing a flower on the pages I’m editing, something I’m sure my editors love) she gets out her own work.

We have never pushed workbooks or flashcards or the like on Sophie, thinking that she will have enough of that in her lifetime. But we’ve also discovered that she loves workbooks. Loves them. She loves tracing letters and doing simple addition and subtraction and finding opposites and differentiating between big and small. Of course, she loves playing with her plastic princess figurines and wooden castle and ponies and dolls much more. But when she sees me doing my work, she insists on doing her work. Hence the picture above (and yes, she’s wearing her bathing suit and sporting a train tattoo on her arm).

She concentrates so hard on this work. And she zips through workbooks so quickly. Grandma and Paw Paw brought her two this weekend, and she’s almost through both of them.

I love that she loves her work. I love that she’s eager to learn. I love the way she wrinkles her brow and purses her lip when she’s trying to think something through. But I also worry. I got As and Bs (and some Cs) in school, but unlike some people, I had to work for the grades—really work for them. And I stressed over my work. This was not my parents’ doing. In fact, they once approached a parent-teacher conference with concern over the amount of time I was spending, worrying about homework. As such, for the rest of the year, my teacher would put a time limit on the top of all my homework assignments, big, red, circled. Once the time limit was up, I had to stop, no matter how unfinished, how imperfect. At first, this additional hurtle worried me to no end. But in the end, it was one of the greatest gifts ever given to me.

I think the best kind of work is work that doesn’t feel like work. I feel those who live that life are lucky. I try to live that life, with caring for my children and my other work, my writing and editing. (But trust me, when it’s 2am and I still have hours of editing left, I often don’t feel lucky.) I also admire those who find joy in work I love to hate—laundry, scrubbing bathrooms, weeding, even cooking. I strive to find joy, fulfillment and contentment in these everyday chores. Some days I do, some days I don’t—even when I remind myself to be grateful that I have a yard to weed, bathrooms to scrub, clothes to wash and good food to cook.

But for now, it’s clear Sophie finds great joy in her work, tracing letters, X’ing big stars and circling little stars, matching. So I let her be. Let her grow. Let her learn. And I hope that passion for work stays with her always, not in an every-day always, but in a big-picture always. And perhaps most, I hope her grownup work is work she loves just as much as her childhood work. Work she looks forward to doing, enjoys doing, loves having done. I realize this requires a combination of skill, luck and attitude, but it’s something I so desperately want for her, for all my children, for everyone.

“Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.” —James Matthew Barrie