The Day Before

Tomorrow is my birthday. Yet today I celebrated.

I slept late, well late for me. Seven a.m. I drove my wife to work, on the way we stopped and I bought her breakfast. We chatted about this and that, nothing of importance. We just spent time together. Time we rarely get to spend together. Time that means the world to me. Because I’m basically a hermit and when I’m home with my family, after a certain amount of time, I retreat to my porch and spend time by myself, leaving my wife and daughter in the living room to watch what they want to watch on the television. One of the reasons for this is because I don’t find much worthwhile to watch on television.

After dropping my wife off at work, while driving home, I turned on the radio, classic rock, a Bob Segar song was just ending and the mandatory commercials started. Memories of my teen years flooded my brains. Awkward meetings with girls followed by even more awkward evenings with them. Late nights out with my pals on Lake Michigan or wandering the empty country roads of Wisconsin in beat up cars looking for trouble and never succeeding. Being disappointed by parents, teachers, police, politicians and just about every adult over the age of twenty-two we’d ever met, seen or heard of. Only one of my buddies at the time had college in his future, don’t ask me about the girls, we could barely tell them our names let alone ask them about their future. At the time, we lied to each other that we’d be together until the end all the while knowing the truth of our individual situations.

Slash’s opening notes to “Paradise City” drove a dagger into my youthful reverie and I was immediately transported to my Navy days. Specifically they early days when I was dating my wife. When she had introduced me to bands like “U2”, “The Cure”, “Bon Jovi” and many more. I on the other hand gave her tapes by bands with names like “AC/DC”, “Iron Maiden”, which she did not like, “Styx”, “Anthrax” and “Megadeth”. It took a few more years before I introduced her to my affliction for Jazz, but I eventually did.

By the end of “Paradise City”, I was parking the car in front of my house and this being summer, my teenage daughter was still sleeping. I decided to take the opportunity to enjoy the rare, tepid southern morning and have some porch time.

Around ten a.m. I entered my house and my daughter was sitting on the couch, eating her teenage breakfast off a paper plate with a  plastic fork. She was still wearing her pajamas covered in a fleece blanket and watching netflix on her phone. The contrast of my eighteen year old daughter compared to me waking up at eighteen on a haze gray ship in a compartment with forty-five half dressed smelly, farting, belching, half-men, half-boys, all sailor from around the country, that I’d experienced at her age did not escape me. I chuckled to myself a bit at this and gave her a list of chores she needed to do for the day and she readily agreed.

Around eleven o’clock my daughter and I went on an adventure. Actually, it was more of a quest. You see, she wants to be a film maker and while she has a video camera, it’s a bit old and it still uses tape. Meaning it’s not digital. So the transfer to computer can be a pain in the ass. We’ve been looking for a specific chord to transfer some footage she shot and the chords seem more elusive than the arc of the covenant.

So we traversed the wilds of thrift stores and pawn shops of the local town. We went to five places. Only one of which she’s been to in the past. The other four, well, those are places that I’ve been to and are considered a bit less palatable people of a gentle constitution. Hell, one place had  sixty inch flat screen television for sale for two hundred and twenty-five bucks. I almost bought it. Another place had brand new blu-ray DVD’s for a buck a piece. I bought three for my daughter. She wanted them and how could I say no, especially since one was a horror movie?

After four hours of driving, dozens of buckets of electrical cords searched, tens of merchants spoken with, several dollars spent we were hungry and tired. So we ate.

Throughout the entire overcast, rainy, never-ending shitty traffic, idiotic driver, fruitless searching, we chatted, joked and had a good time. What I’m trying to say I suppose is, we bonded.

We got to be dad and daughter. Father and Offspring. Mentor and mentee. Friends.

And that right there. Those hours…. those are the greatest birthday gift I could ever want in my entire life. Unexpected time spent with my wife and sharing a quick breakfast with her and spending time with my daughter doing something that may not have resulted in a tangible treasure but resulted in a treasure that neither time nor man can ever destroy.

Have a great week.