Canonsburg, Pennsylvania September 2024
After another Friday night of back-to-back ninety-minute soccer practices, I wearily piled my darling girls and their over-sized, over-stuffed equipment bags into my car. My first-born must have sensed that maybe I wasn’t looking forward to the dark and winding roads of the deep southern suburbs of Pittsburgh, so she made me an offer: “You know mama, I could drive home.” I smiled at her big eyes in the rearview mirror, then began to back out.
Her offer was tempting. Mostly because I can’t see shit. And I white-knuckle it the whole way home. What ever happened to streetlights, anyway? When I was a kid, we told time by them. Now they’ve gone missing in both backwoods and bitchy neighborhoods alike. And it’s not in the name of reducing the carbon footprint – as advertised – at least not where I spend most of my time driving these days.
But she continued, “I used to drive home from first grade all the time. I’m pretty good.”
Now she had my attention. I had to stop and think about our lives when Kate was in the first grade and why she might be “driving.”
And then I connected the times, places, and most importantly, the people.
It was the meaty part of the Covid-19 pandemic. Things were still shitty, but had at least evolved to the point where we were no longer feeling like wildly uninformed, undrafted zombies, fumbling from one unknown to another.
Kate was part of a learning “pod” with three other friends in our neighborhood. Along with the other parents, we hired a brilliant young teacher who worked with the school district to teach the kids the same lessons and curriculum in our neighbor’s fancy basement. At that point, we weren’t comfortable with her returning to the local school, but we wanted her to have some interactions with other kids because she was terribly lonely.
We also learned the previous Spring that my experience teaching campaign management to graduate students did not translate in any way to me teaching my six-year-old anything. Especially with a toddler wrapped around my legs. And because I had an especially bad attitude about the new methods of teaching math and reading used in schools today. More than once, Kate would say, “Daddy, mama says that my math is stupid.” In my defense, what I said was probably closer to, “whatever happened to adding and subtracting? This number bond shit is just making it more complicated.”
My day-to-day “pod” included my two young daughters and my partner at the time, of course. It also came to include three absolute lifesavers during those wildly tricky times: my sister Leslie, my mama, and my dad.
Ah yes. Then it clicked. Kate. My dad. The driving. I didn’t know it happened when it happened, but it made perfect sense.
Both of my girls love school. All parts. And when the world shut down, I wasn’t sure who the forced isolation hit harder: my daughter Kate or my dad. Neither can stand to be caged birds. Even at 86, even in the advanced stages of blood cancer, he still referees soccer or basketball every damn day. His catch-me-if-you-can level of energy and need to be on the move has always been slightly maddening to the people who love him. But I’d never change a thing about my dad.
Though the introduction of the pod made a huge difference for Kate, like so many, she still longed for “normal” life and it showed on her sweet face. And so my dad must have pulled out one of his hall-of-fame tactics to cheer her up: the driving lesson.
When our family pod got together each week, we would grill steaks or burgers and I would always have music playing from a customized list of songs for every person in our pod. My sister would make Manhattans for my dad with my good gourmet black cherries. I did my best to make my house feel like a restaurant for everyone.
And my dad would always pick up Kate from her “pod school” in order to get out of even my house. On the very short trip home, he must have put Kate on his lap and let her steer the car, then told her what he told every grand-kid and all of us kids when one of his various “lessons” or missions came to a close:
“Don’t tell your mother!”
And up until a few weeks ago, to her credit, she did not.
You see feeling like you are getting away with something is key to my dad’s methodology.
While I am deeply familiar with my dad’s bag of tricks, it never occurred to me that he would have tried this on actual roads. That was a fun new wrinkle. I can remember my sister-in-law turning a thousand colors when he did this with my nephews in my parents’ driveway twenty years ago.
My dad has always had his own way of making his kids and grandkids feel better about themselves or just better about life, whether they needed “a boost,” as he calls it, or not.
He doesn’t remark on how you might be feeling and sit you down and tell you how you’re going to be OK, how it’s going to be OK, or how “you can do hard things,” or anything like that. At least not when you’re a kid.
When you’re a kid, my dad gives you something to do, somewhere to go, or something to eat. Sometimes all three. And it usually involved some amount of mischief or pushed some sort of limit or boundary, real or imaginary. Just enough to take you out of your head for a bit or make you feel a little more powerful somehow.
You weren’t always sure you wanted to do it, because it might have sounded nuts, but you did it anyway. Like when you’re on vacation, and he pulls you aside and hands you more money than you need, and tells you to “go find him a newspaper.” This was long before the days when hotels had them stacked in the lobbies for free. Maybe you’re seven, and maybe you had to cross a four-lane highway. BUT, you knew you got to keep the change for later that night at the amusement park. Or you could use it to buy some candy or a souvenir wherever you found a newspaper.
The “long leash” method as I’ve come to call it, is one of my dad’s favorite ways to make kids feel good and gain confidence. It was never about an errand he needed done – because I know a lot of truly lazy parents who take advantage of their kids – and that’s definitely not my dad. He rarely needed anything, but he would use every opportunity that came up to give his kids and grandkids some little taste of independence, especially if he noticed some kind of tension or bad feelings brewing.
A lot of times the mission was in your favor. If we were at the beach or at a ball game, he’d send you to get an ice cream cone or a hot dog – but the condition was that you went by yourself or with your sibling and had to get one for your brother or sister too.
He always encouraged us kids and the grandkids to explore places and mix it up on our own or with friends or our brothers and sisters – at a sprawling park, or on the boardwalk, at the majestic public library in the city, or at a bustling restaurant – while he looked on from the table, a bench, a balcony, or followed behind in the background.
When I was nine, my dad gave me more cash than he should have and a ride to Main Street to catch a bus to downtown Pittsburgh to meet my oldest sister, who was a receptionist at a law firm. We had lunch and did some Christmas shopping. True to form, we didn’t tell my mom until after I got back. It helped that I told her I got present for her from dad at Kaufman’s. Back then he was a terrible shopper. This became a yearly tradition.
Today, some poor parent (or grandparent) might get arrested or publicly lambasted on social media for some of the things my dad did and does. But it was and is rooted in so much love. Love of family and love of life.
And when it came time for me to make my first big decisions, it never occurred to me to be afraid. I decided to go away to a big city for college and then moved to our nation’s capital, by myself, to live and work after graduating.
It’s not that it was all sunshine and rainbows when I got there, but I was never scared to try, and always made my way.
I never knew that he was building my confidence or making me feel stronger or better while it was happening. I just knew that when my dad asked, I said yes. I felt good and felt free and felt trusted. But I’m thinking now that that’s what good parenting sometimes looks like. It’s not perfect and it takes risks. It’s not always heavy handed or dictated by therapists or the latest studies.
And even if there were no methods, I will forever hold onto the magic.
- Stay cool, NT
Author’s Note: Dear friends, due to changes in my personal circumstances, I will only be able to post here once per month, aiming for the middle of the month for new material. I need to focus a bit more on paying gigs to support myself and my girls. If anyone wants to convert to a paid subscriber, every bit helps! But I am very grateful for all of you who choose to remain readers - cheers - NT.