The Future of the Past
It has been years since it was just the two of us. I used to wash our dishes by hand at the end of the night …
… in that tiny rented cottage amid cotton fields in eastern North Carolina.
… after a long day at a job that barely paid the bills.
… while I wondered what the heck I was doing.
Washing dishes made me think. Made me reflect. Cleared my mind.
We would have “date” nights. She was the only person in my life. She was my whole world.
More than a decade has passed since those days that immediately followed the biggest choice I’ve ever made in my life. I was fresh out of college, hadn’t really started searching for a job within my field of study, didn’t know where I wanted to live and had grown tired of people in general after four years at the beach town college when I was told “her mother isn’t fit to raise her; if you want to do it, we’re not going to stop you.”
I had only recently learned how to hold a baby or change a diaper. I didn’t know what the best diet was for myself, let alone a baby. I didn’t have a relative for support within 650 miles.
Of course, I said “yes.”
Years have passed and I am no longer a single father. My daughter’s step-mother came into her life when she was 6 — the only to hold this title to her. She gets a division of my attention now, but my primary responsibility continues to be my pleasure: taking care of her.
Tonight, she went on her first date and I would be lying if I said it didn’t feel like it’s the beginning of the end. It’s like the morning I walked her into school for the first time … I knew the days of my parenting being the only influence in her life had come to an end, and time would eventually tell I was correct.
It’s unfair of me to be disappointed by this steady descent. Eventually, I found myself just happy to observe. She grew her own wings, fluttered and started to fly while I watched.
Tonight I dropped her off at a local pizza joint. I joked to her new boyfriend I would be “patrolling” the area. I told her to call me when she was ready to be picked up. I backed up from the building, drove toward the parking lot exit and pulled onto the road.
And I started crying.
No, this isn’t marriage … it’s a couple of just-about-16-year-olds having pizza on Valentine’s Day. Odds are, this kid will be one of several she dates/befriends/sort-of-dates over her next 2 1/2 years of high school. This probably isn’t the first date of many over the rest of their lives.
But I felt like l did on her first day of school … like it was the beginning of the end of something. For me. For her, it’s the beginning … but for me, it’s the end.
It won’t be long until I am no longer needed.
At least like I was in eastern NC.
When she was little.
When we were all we had.
After I dropped her off, I walked into the kitchen to the dishes left from making brownies for Hollie’s restaurant staff, who were exceptionally busy because it was Valentine’s Day. My 6-year-old son, Kalista’s little brother, burst into the living room to play with his Valentine’s Day gifts sitting on the coffee table. The dishwasher was empty; I knew all I had to do was rinse and load.
Life has become “traditional” for me since those days on rented land between cotton fields in eastern NC; we own our house in SC and it sits between two fields on our land. We don’t worry about bills anymore. I have an amazing job that affords me the time I need to be a father; I am more professionally satisfied than I have ever been, as I am a sort of “teacher” and I enjoy that more than writing. Most importantly, Kalista has a mother. She has a brother as well as a step-brother. Her grandparents live 20 minutes away.
Still teary-eyed but keeping it together so my son wouldn’t think I was “sad,” I spread a hand towel on the counter and sat the dish drainer on top. I filled one side of the sink with soapy water.
Then I began to wash dishes by hand.
And think.
And reflect.
And clear my mind.
