I’m grateful for a day of cooking and reading. I’m grateful for a clean kitchen. I’m grateful for feeling free. I’m grateful to not have to hide myself anymore. I’m grateful for the kitchen garden hose and grateful to not have to carry 5 gallon buckets from the shower. I’m grateful for being able to see the lesson. I’m grateful to be sober today.
The day of lugging home produce on the subway on Saturday fed a kitchen-based frenzy on Sunday. Well, frenzy might be a touch too strong. But the blueberries turned into muffins, the tomatoes turned into a pasta sauce and the corn turned into a salad along with more of the tomatoes. My normally tidy kitchen turned into, I don’t know, I’ve been staring at the screen trying to come up with a clever description and it’s just not there. My kitchen got really messy. I was almost going to do a whole thing about “turning into,” but I don’t think we’re going to go there.
Instead, I’m going to tell a brief story about the power of genetics and dropping the f-bomb. I remember the first time I used the F-word, well, I remember the first time I got caught. My brother and I were engaged in one of our fake-ish Kung Fu fights in the backyard, he landed a kick that was harder than our agreed-upon parameters. I yelled, “What the F!” My mom heard and came to the backdoor:
Mom: Randall, what did you just say?1
Me: Ummmm, what?
Mom: I heard you and that is not a word we use in this house. Is that clear? Do you even know what it means?
Me: I think it means I’m angry.2
Mom: Don’t be smart. If I hear you use that word again there will be serious consequences!
It will not surprise you that the F-word became a staple for me. I had and have a zillion usages. For example, a bad shot on the golf course will elicit an exasperated “f*** a duck!” More often, I use it combined with the words “What" and “The” and can produce a variety of meanings with different intonations. It can be a question tinged with outrage, an exclamation, an expression of a profound inability to understand something or just a completely dismissive, “why would you ever do/say that?” My daughter has never enjoyed me using the phrase and has expressed that to me on a number of occasions. I do try to moderate my usage. But I’ve been saying that for about fifty years, so it’s an uphill struggle.
The thing that makes me laugh is that my daughter has started saying “WTF.” I’m never going to say anything, but it sounds exactly like me saying it when she does and she says it a lot.3 At first, there was a weird feeling of pride at seeing a piece of myself show up in her, a "look what I taught her" kind of feeling. And then I think of some of the other things I taught her and that feels less good. I try to imagine how it must have felt to have your father lie to you the way I lied to her. My father never did that. That's the kind of thing we both have to come to terms with and it's not a weekend project.
Watching and feeling my kids gradually be willing to edge closer has been pretty profoundly moving. It’s taught me about humility, acceptance, patience, the power of showing up and shutting up. Not so long ago, my son told me very calmly that he was an adult, that he got to choose who was going to be a part of his life and while he would always be grateful for everything I’d done for him, that’s about as far as it was going to get. I’ll bet you can guess how it felt when I heard him make the “Wait, I thought you had the tickets?” joke to his girlfriend when they were taking me to a Yankees game for Father’s Day. Or when my daughter calls to tell me about her day and describes a co-worker’s domination of a Slack Channel with a super-caustic, “I mean, what the F###?”
It feels pretty f****** good.
Thanks for Letting Me Share
Growing up, the use of “Randall” typically meant that what came next was going to be kind of unpleasant. Interesting that I prefer it today?
It also meant that there would be a fair amount of come-uppance due a certain younger brother once Mom went back into the kitchen.
Haha, no. I’m not going to record it.
I’m shocked you didn’t retort, “But we’re not *in* the house.” That’s what my firstborn smarta$$ would have said.
When my kids were young, I tried to refrain from using certain words. When they got to “cussing age” and let one slip in front of me, I calmly said, “You know, the thing about f-bombs is that you should use them sparingly. Don’t just throw them around like you’re seasoning with salt and pepper shakers. When you use that word, you want to make it count.”
Kinda like how they knew mama meant business if I dropped an f-bomb on them.