Guest Blog: The Ties That Bind

“As the generally accepted signposts of maturity came and went for me (turning 18 then 21, serious relationship, college graduation, regular job, buying a house, even marriage) I was still driving along, looking for that maturity exit.  Then I became a father.  There was my exit!  Many of the other drivers on this road to adulthood exited before me and some were still driving by me, but this exit was mine.”

Today’s post-Father’s Day essay is brought to us by dynamic Kevin Robertson. Kevin’s piece about fatherhood is moving and insightful and challenges us to think about own own definitions maturity. Kevin offers us a rare insight on parenthood that is not often seen on Welcome to Adulthood[*], and adds another layer of understanding to our ever-evolving examination on what it means to be “an adult.”  He will also make you think twice about getting your dad a tie for Father’s Day!

[*] Note to parents: Inspired to submit? Add to our discussion with your thoughts on parenting and its relationship to adulthood, maturity, and/or personal growth. We’d love to hear from you!

The Ties That Bind

by Kevin Robertson

I did not get a tie this year for Father’s Day.  No barbeque apron or chef’s hat, no card depicting a lazy man sitting in a recliner with a remote in his hand, or any of the various clichéd items most men get from their children or spouse on the third Sunday in June each year.  What I did get was a 300 mile drive across the Arizona desert with my kids in route to a youth baseball tournament.  As the kids slept the drive away, I began thinking about fatherhood in general and how impactful it has been for me on the road to adulthood.

Unlike my drive across Interstate 8, the road to adulthood has few signposts telling you how fast to go or what exit to take.  Some people find their way easily, but I did not.  I always associated adulthood with maturity.  More specifically, maturity as defined by finally putting self interest aside-doing what was right rather than what you wanted.  As the generally accepted signposts of maturity came and went for me (turning 18 then 21, serious relationship, college graduation, regular job, buying a house, even marriage) I was still driving along, looking for that maturity exit.  Then I became a father.  There was my exit!  Many of the other drivers on this road to adulthood exited before me and some were still driving by me, but this exit was mine.

The responsibility for others was the key for me.  Fatherhood defines my maturity, my adulthood. It means constantly evaluating whether or not I’m setting the right example and teaching the right life lessons.   My week with was spent watching baseball with longtime fathers, new fathers, fathers-to-be, and found myself wondering how fatherhood was affecting their adulthood.  I work with children every day that grew up in homes where fatherhood was not the key to adulthood.  Everyone’s adulthood is different, which is what makes the journey so exciting, daunting, frustrating and rewarding all at once.

Our journey to the desert ended safely and successfully.   The trip was full of laughter and stories we will think about and remember all of our lives.  Just like my journey to adulthood.  So even though I didn’t get a tie to wear this year (and that’s a good thing!), ties are important to me on Father’s Day.  Ties to my father and the memories I have growing up as his son.  And ties, of course, to my two beautiful children, who are teaching me so much about what it means to be an adult every day.

P.S. When we got home, my teenagers presented me with my Father’s Day gift.  It was a new copy of “Kisses for Daddy”, a children’s book they loved and wore out when they were just learning to read.  After they left the room I did what any mature, masculine member of adulthood would do…I cried.

***

Photo by RunnerAlan2004 via Flickr.

Quarterly Writing Theme Winner: Inhabiting – The Bench in Apartments

“‘We’ll just write and be artists,’ we said over a jug of cheap wine.”

Inhabiting – The Bench in Apartments

By Two Girls on a Bench (Siana-Lea Gildard & Patricia Marsac)

We are often known for sitting on benches.  But when it comes to inhabiting, we have actually lived in quite a few places.  When we were first welcomed into adulthood (the day after we graduated from college) we moved into a motor home.  It was parked in our friend’s parent’s driveway.  We had no apartment lined up, no real jobs lined up, so this was our big plan, to move into our friend’s parent’s motor home.  Yes, we had humanities degrees – planning is not in the DNA of those with English and Theatre majors.

TRICIA: We aren’t that bad at planning, at least we had the motor home.

SIANA: A motor home is not a plan, an apartment and a job would have been a plan.

The best part of inhabiting this motor home was the adventure.  We felt so cool, so bohemian, we were just “crashing” somewhere until we figured things out.  Sure, the motor home was musty and the plumbing didn’t work and we had to go in the house to shower, but we got so much street cred.  Not sure who gave us the street cred, guess it was all in our minds, but we felt kinda cool.  We laughed about it a lot, mostly because we didn’t allow ourselves to be nervous about the idea that we didn’t have a frickin’ clue what we were going to do with our lives.  “We’ll just write and be artists,” we said over a jug of cheap wine.  But then our friend’s parents started asking when we’d be moving on and we really did miss running water, so we took all the checks we got as graduation presents and put them together for a deposit on an apartment.

Our first real apartment was in a sketchy area where we lived next store to a drug dealer.  We aren’t exaggerating, Tricia went to pick him up from jail one day because his pregnant fiancé needed a ride.  We really loved that place, it was a few blocks from the beach and had huge bedrooms and we wrote and painted all the time.  Sure, our window was broken by someone throwing a bottle through it one night.  Sure, Siana’s crappy ass car was broken into and nothing was taken because there was nothing to take.  Sure, Tricia felt it necessary to walk down the street carrying her Econo Club to protect herself rather than to protect her car late at night.  But that place was a gem.

After six months of living the life in that apartment, we  needed to move closer to the jobs we finally got (Tricia lugging things around the theatre, Siana lugging papers around a publishing company) and moved into what we now refer to as the roach motel.  This place sucked, but it was cheap and our reflexes became lightning fast as we killed roaches left and right with whatever we had in hand; whether it was a paper towel, a frying pan or a shoe.   We chalked this up to life experience and wrote a song for one of our performance art shows about roaches, which received the acclaim of many.  Writing what we knew, that was really living the dream.

SIANA: Yeah, I don’t remember the roach thing being that romantic.

TRICIA: Shut up, that roach song was beloved by all.

Finally, our last apartment together (before we moved in with the men that would later become our husbands) was the best.  We still talk about it with such nostalgia.  We set one of our screenplays in this apartment just so we could spend more time there in our minds.  It was a sort of two story apartment with a great kitchen where we really started learning how to cook and a living room where we really started learning how to drink and party.  We had a neighbor that played the piano, an old man across the courtyard that sat there with a little girl watching the swimming pool and a next store neighbor that became Tricia’s husband.   We had people over a lot; cast parties from the shows we worked on, birthday and fondue parties and random gatherings with strange people showing up that we didn’t know or invite.  But it was all fun.  And we wrote a lot together in that apartment.

TRICIA: I loved that apartment, I miss my bead curtain.

SIANA: Me too, I miss that old papasan chair too.

­­­­­­­­­­­Website: www.2girlsonabench.com

Email: blog@2girlsonabench.com

Quarterly Writing Theme Winner: Life in a Box

“Out of necessity, I grew accustomed to never owning anything that I couldn’t move up or down three flights of stairs on my own.”

Quarterly Writing Theme Winner: Inhabit

Life in a Box

By Luke Williams

The tumultuous days of young adulthood are often marked by a lifestyle of near-vagrancy. Dorms, houses with eight occupants, coffin-sized studios, and the ever-popular Craigslist leap-of-faith roommate – I’ve lived them all. Looking back, I was a new-millennium cowboy living life out on the open range of new possibilities without anything to tie me down.

And while I would band together from time-to-time with other likeminded young adventurers it was always apparent that I was riding solo. “Self,” I might say on occasion, “your Craigslist leap-of-faith roommie suddenly has a brand-new wardrobe, and you seem to be missing a couple checks and a few sawbucks from your dresser…Suspicious?”

Looking out for yourself and anticipating betrayal out of someone you share a bathroom with was such a foreign concept that it nearly threatened to steamroll right over me. I was lucky enough to grow-up in a reasonably functioning household –at the very least I never had to worry about finding someone other than myself getting horizontal in my bedroom (and my bed!) until my grown-up years.

It was during these early days that my concept of home radically shifted. It was no longer a safe haven, a respite from the outside world, it was just literally where I could fall into unconsciousness for varying spans of time. Most striking of all is that it was never permanent. Nine months here, six months there, and one anomalous year-long stint with a signification other.

Out of necessity, I grew accustomed to never owning anything that I couldn’t move up or down three flights of stairs on my own. I stopped searching for random cardboard boxes and instead invested in giant rubber containers. I never gave a passing thought to hauling around personal treasures, pictures, or anything that fell outside of utility.

I became an expert at urban, young adult survival. I could screen out the Craigslist roommates who might try to put broken glass in my cereal simply from the number of smiley faces they used in the posting, and should I sense any impending doom after move-in, I could have my truck loaded-up within a day and be off to my next stop-over.

As I continue down my path through adulthood, the challenge has now shifted to learning how to turn that survival instinct off, or at least dial it back a notch. I’m in a stable work environment, I have a stable living situation, and yet I can’t seem to bring myself to unpack everything I own. I struggle to convince myself that hanging a picture isn’t a futile gesture, and I still come home expecting everything I own to have been pawned.

I find myself once again readjusting my conceptualization of what home means. So maybe, just maybe… adulthood is about knowing when to reassess expectations just as much as it is knowing how to avoid a roommate who is prone to perform pirouettes off a balcony.

***

Luke Williams is a freelance writer and graphic designer. He lives in a modest apartment in San Diego and recently purchased a couch. For more of Luke’s work, visit his blog LukusnotLucas.  

Photo by Amsterdamize via Flickr.

Wordless Wednesday: Adulthood is Unpredictable

*Photo of Green Flash at Morro Bay, CA, by Mike Baird via Flickr.