Super What?

Super What?

In about four years, I hope to be standing at a podium in front of a group of people declaring with a smirk on my face, and a sigh in my voice, the good-bye proclamation of a professional athlete announcing retirement: “Wow! What a ride.”

In my instance it will be about parenthood. By then daughter Jenna will be 18 and off to college and sons Evan and Chad, to be 23 and 20 respectively, will need to buck up and take life by themselves.

When my wife, Peg, and I went to the “counseling” session about a decade ago, the therapist described us as part of the “new generation of super parents” because we both worked fulltime, and then used most of the rest of our time driving our kids all around to soccer, hockey, basketball, youth club, friends’ houses, and parties. I never took this seriously, and thought it was just our responsibility to do a better job than our parents, just like all young parents have done since the first rebellious adolescent declared everything parents knew was false.

The therapist was my wife’s (another story for another time) and I agreed to go along on a session to “understand” things better. It was about two minutes in when I knew I was duped. It was the standard question that clued me in: “Remember how it used to be when you first fell in love?” Yes, and I’ve done my share of listening to Dr. Laura too.

At that instant I remembered being at a presentation that recruited average Joe’s for selling water purifiers. “Does anyone here like money?” was the presenter’s first question. I felt like shaving a swath down the middle of my head , drawing a scar, and drooling right there in the front row. After all, that was the audience he was evidently speaking to.

Anyway, for the next 58 minutes in the therapist’s office we talked and she listened. I told her we have a hard time doing things all together as a family, which precipitated her “Super parents” comment. I then added that last week I was able to talk everyone into going to church. “Well, at least you’re doing something together,” she said, a reply that belied her belief in organized religion.

Although being a super parent was an obvious gratuitous comment to get us back for another $150 hour, I think about it from time to time. Mostly when I have to dissuade my teenagers from having something they somehow think they are entitled to. Not being rich, or even close to Barack Obama’s 5% above $250,000, I remind them that we are doing better than many in the third world who do not even believe they are entitled to food. In fact, I used to place a National Geographic picture of a starving child in front of them when the refused to eat something because it was green. I stopped because my wife said it was child abuse.

Although the therapist did offer some suggestions to get the family together: take short vacations, have family game night, and try to have family meals. The suggestions were good, but I am the only one in my family who enjoys routine. So, I lose. “Dad, we do not want to do the same thing every time – just because you do.” Being the good mother, Peg supported them 100% on that one. So we compromised. We took two short vacations a year and one five-plus day vacation. They weren’t usually so expensive: a night at a discount hotel at the coast, two nights in my well-heeled brother-in-law’s vacation home, and a week in Michigan staying with my sister. During these vacations, on holiday weekends, and at other choice times we played family games.

On the advice about family meals, I should have offered her a handkerchief for her drool, for it was not brain surgery to mimic a remark from the John Tesh radio hour. In fact though, I put the theory of family meals being productive unity times as (excuse me as I skip a generation) hogwash.

First of all, the therapist knew we were super parents. Soccer practice was at 6:30 and we got home from work at 6; piano and guitar lessons always seemed to only be available at 5:30; and what about the nights when hockey practice ended at 8:30 and kids had to be in bed by 9:30? Homework had to be done at 5:30, before practice. After all, super parents help children with homework too.

Come to think of it, what about school conferences, concerts, meetings, and exhibitions? They all happen at 7, but try to cook, set up, and devour a meal while picking up kids from daycare, changing everyone, getting what you need for the event, double-checking time and place, and scampering out the door. No, it was a snack and dinner later.

Nowadays, we have two computers where homework and My Space are practiced, two parents showing up around 6, and then the teens are off in their cars to youth groups and volleyball practice, or to shutter themselves in their rooms to knead their phones dialoguing with friends.

But, as I’ve said, I never really thought I was a super parent and still don’t. But that doesn’t mean that I won’t enjoy it when they all leave. You see, yesterday’s $5 bill is today’s twenty, and they never have time to maintain their crease in my wallet. Along with that is the perpetual discussion about what is and is not constituted as family expense versus allowance. I’ve recently been successful at moving movies to the allowance side of the ledger, but $30 was not good enough to go on an overnight trip with a friend to watch a gymnastic event.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my children very much, and they have provided great excitement and humor in my life. So, I will enjoy these next four years living with them, and then I’ll enjoy the next 40 visiting them.