Dad on the Rise

Posts Tagged ‘Adjustments’

It is frustrating to have a daughter and everyone being so locked in to the whole pink vs. blue societal construct idea.  Why can’t my daughter play with foam swords, race cars, or airplanes.  I don’t see anything wrong with the fact that she was a football player for Halloween.

When did we as a society stop evolving?  The 1900s were about change and progress.  Voting rights, racial equality, and such all issues combated and improved upon in the 1900s.  Here we are in the new millennium and my daughter cannot play with a blue helicopter without receiving a look or snicker.  Go to a fast food joint and order a child’s meal and ask for the boy toy for your daughter and when you get to the window they will look at you weird.

I am so happy that I have a wife that shares my view and doesn’t put our daughter in a box.  She is probably even worse than me as she was a bit of the tomboy growing up.  Would I feel the same if I had a boy?  I feel confident that I would be open-minded, however, I must admit that I wouldn’t be as progressive.  If my son wanted to be Dora, for instance, i would be fine with it, but if he wanted to be Snow White, I wouldn’t be able to cope.

Hopefully, we all can continue forward and not backwards.

Our family has had two major blows in the last two months.  My sister-in-law died on March 8th and now my father died on May 4th.  This has been a terrible year so far and hoping that things start to change in a hurry as we are drowning.

My father has been battling several ailments for the better part of 5 years, but it has been pretty bad for him the last 2 to 3 years.  He has been in and out of the ICU and has done stints of 4 and 2 months of medically induced coma.  He has been on a respirator once and had a trake twice.  So for him to have passed was a mericiful thing.  Though we expected this, and often even hoped for it to end his pain, I must admit that it is still extemely hard to handle.

My father is sorely missed as our relationship has stregthened throughout the years and he was probably my best friend.  We saw each other at least once a week and often frequented a baseball game, the movies, and always got together to watch the NY Giants on Sundays.   I can’t even drink a beer with out thinking of him and remebering the countless ones we shared over the years.

We had to explain to the Tornado, whom my father had dubbed the Tornado, that Poppy is dead and though at 3 years old she can say the words, she hasn’t grasped the concept.  We are taking her to the wake, though for only a short time, so she can start to understand the finality of all of this.  Poppy and the Tornado were extremely close and Poppy was a wonderful grandfather to her, and his 5 other grand kids, all of whom were able to say good bye hours before he finally succumbed.  Actually, he was surrounded by much of his family in the closing moments.  His four children, wife, two sisters, 6 grandchildren, son-in-law, and my wife, whom he became more like a father than merely a father-in-law too, were there in the last hours.  In the final moments his wife of what would would have been 47 years on May 6th and two daughters were there to hold his hand and I arrived about five minutes after the fact followed by my brother shortly after.  The man loved his family more than anything else in the world and was surrounded by them until the end.

My father was a hero in life and will be a legend in death, at least to me and the countless family and friends he has touched in his rich and full life.  Furthermore, to me, he will always be simply “pal.”

I love you, Dad.

Tragic news has rocked my family as my wife’s sister passed away yesterday very suddenly of an apparent asthma attack, al though details are still pending.  So yesterday morning my wife was obviously very distraught.  Her relationship with her sister over the years has been both good and bad, but despite any sibling animosity there was love there, even if neither party wanted to admit it aloud.

To make matters worse my father, who was admitted to the ICU a couple of days ago, had to be put on a respirator yesterday evening as his condition has worsened.  He has been very ill for a few years and things are not looking like they are going to improve any time soon or at all.

My wife spent the night with her mother at her house and this must have been a very interesting night. The relationship between my mother-in-law and my wife is not good at all to say the least.  Under these terrible circumstances they are now thrust together and hopefully they will get through it unharmed, both physically and emotionally.  

The Tornado is having a rough morning as she was asleep in the car last night when Mommy was dropped off and has awoken to find Mommy gone.  She is not used to this as Mommy is currently working from home and is here every morning.  She is handling it quite well, but doesn’t understand where Mommy is and why she can’t be here to play with her.  Luckily she will be going to our neighbor’s house for the da. She absolutely loves their family and they adore her.

Gotta go as the Tornado is beckoning and need to meet up with my wife to help them out.  Will update soon.

So Mommy is going away for the first time without the Tornado.  She has the opportunity to go Orlando for free.  Disney World is bringing her down to be on a mommy blogger panel.  They pay for her airfare, two nights at their resort, and give her free tickets to their parks.  She gets to review the resort and parks and offer suggestions to make the park more family friendly.  It really is so great for her; the only catch is that she has to go all by herself.  Two problems, leaving the Tornado home and flying.

Mommy has never been away for the Tornado for this long.  The longest she has been gone is overnight and that only resulted in about 12 hours away, most of which was spent sleeping.  This time Mommy leaves Friday morning and doesn’t come back until late Sunday evening.  Three days and two nights away from home.  This is going to be so hard for her.  I can’t relate as I have never been gone that long either.  The worst I have dealt with is not seeing the Tornado for like 24 hours.  I work the 3pm to 1 am shift and I swapped with the morning person and came back to work at 5:30 am.  It felt like a life time, especially when I came home and she was napping and I ended up falling a sleep, so I didn’t actually see her until after 6 pm.  This is going to be so hard for her.  I hope she has a good time, I think she will.

Problem two, Mommy hates to fly.  The funny thing is that Mommy has flown from New York to Africa on three separate occasions, though they were about 15 years ago.  Now a little flight from New York to Florida is giving her so much stress.  Though I really am not criticizing her as I too hate to fly, though I am getting more comfortable now that I work in the aviation field and actually see that thousands of flights occur on a daily basis without any issues.  I do need to keep in mind that I am feeling more comfortable in theory as I have yet to fly in the last three years since I started my aviation position.

Flying is going to be hard this time because she is flying by herself for the first time.  I keep trying to comfort her with the idea that she is flying on big aircraft with a very good airline, which is helping a little.  To further complicate things this is the first flight since we went to Las Vegas and we lost our first child, A Moment of Silence.  So it is very understandable that she is apprehensive to fly.  She is going despite her multiple fears, oh yeah did I mention she is afraid of heights.  I think this is going to be really good for her and afterwards she’s going to want to travel more often.

Well wish her luck and I will definitely update everyone after her trip.