The years slip past like the spring rains filling the earth. The rains come and go and the day after we hardly recall their sweet aroma as they approached our dry land. I had such great plans, as the step dad days approached and I welled up with pride over raising three great sons. Plans to teach, learn, play and build a relationship with Al, Plans to build projects like the clocks we have made, the rock tumbler gems we made, the shelves for all the magical little collections of mysterious and radically unique things.
Like nearly every person, me included, that has met Al, we find Al to be so excited and passionate about whatever it is he has an interest in, I have seen this over and over hundreds of times. Al walks into church and starts talking about rocks, the normal reaction is to think he is passionate about rocks, and you wouldn’t be wrong… necessarily… Or perhaps Al yells across the building about his favorite sports team and your immediate assumption is that he follows sports or at least this sports team, again, you wouldn’t be wrong… necessarily… Or perhaps you are a World War 2 vet and Al shows an enthusiasm to know everything about the war, you wouldn’t be wrong in that assumption either… necessarily…
Let’s take a walk into how this works, how can one person have time to be interested in all these sports teams, find the most exquisite agates and amethyst gemstones, know all there is to know about every war ever fought, be the self-taught expert in the “Byzantine” era, still play so many sports yet have time to watch every food network show ever aired? It’s super simple, He doesn’t, kind of, but then again, he does. As a “step” in dad, I have had a wonderful opportunity to see this from the inside out, I have had a few years (10 years now) of living with Al every day, to study him and try my best to provide for him the things that he can’t provide for himself, to teach him things like: pouring milk into a bowl instead of “at” the bowl, how to open the cereal box rather than “exposing” the cereal in the box… or one of my favorites, how to put peanut butter on a cracker instead of putting the crackers into the peanut butter. There are so many different areas I have worked with Al but the most evasive of them all is “thought control”.
With that being said, I feel like an explanation is the next paragraph rather than creating another long run on a sentence… (Run-ons are my favorites). Thought control is like creating the “Thought police” out of Orwell’s book “1985” but you are the government, and you need to make valued decisions on how to form this world that you can create inside the gray matter we are so fond of declaring autonomy over. When Al thinks about something it’s the only thing he can think about, even when it is not an appropriate time to indulge these thoughts. For instance, when Al is setting the table, he needs to be reminded as many as 20 times to focus on setting the table, why? It’s not a random distraction like in the movie “UP” when the dogs get distracted by a ball, or in the movie “Finding Nemo ” when the gulls are calling out “mine” at every presentation of what may be food… it’s more like 50 or more thoughts that are on a continual loop, much like the old 8-tracks, you could switch from one track to the next but you couldn’t really fast forward, you could never rewind and you had to “hunt” to find the right song… you couldn’t just “click” on the title and play that one song… now imaging the button was sticky and would randomly jump from track to track, but at the same time, wont switch tracks no matter how much you try. Sticky buttons that would sometimes switch tacks when least desired and other times wont switch no matter how hard we try…
I really try to help Al in thought control, and he has come a long way in ten years, but imagine if you would, the road traveled is only a mile long, with ten lanes, and it is a looped highway, you can’t ever get far, but you sure do a lot of driving. I hope this helps someone out there. I hope this helps to understand that there is progress, that Al has learned a lot of thought control, and his daily “chores “are able to become more complex over time and he feels so much success at things that most of us take for granted. Here are a few successes that Al has recently celebrated, and when I say “celebrated” he is so proud of his success, and he so often yells out “MOM!!! I DID IT!!! I DID IT MOM!!” getting the bread bag twist tie off without ripping the bread bag apart. Slicing a banana into chunks using his new knife or hanging up his jacket at church without breaking the hanger, and one of my favorites, making hot chocolate from a package.
I understand this is not an easy thing to truly put into words, it’s taken ten years for me to articulate these ideas onto paper, some days are bad, some days are good, but the step fathering is not a task to be taken lightly.
“Fathering by choice rather than obligation” is a big, big deal!!! I’m not trying to beat my own drum, but stepdads need encouragement more than they let on and your support is like the oxygen needed to keep going.
In closing, remember the spring rains, they come and go, and everyone forgets the sweet smell after the flowers start to bloom, but the spring rains are what gives the flowers the water needed to grow. Stepdads are much like the spring rains, look for a stepdad and say a word of encouragement, they need it.
God bless and thanks be to our creator for unanticipated opportunities. A man once said opportunity is missed by so many because it’s dressed in overalls and looks like work.