Dad Revisited

When we put an addition on the house, my wife had the brilliance and forethought to create a Family Room that could easily be repurposed into an apartment. As we got older, she reasoned, so would our parents. That would require us to have a place i our home for them to live, either temporarily or permanently.

That would prove to be particularly prescient. Recently, my mother-in-law took ill. She is currently in a facility receiving care she truly needs. She is, for the most part, healthy and will probably continue to be healthy for some time to come. She will require special care for a while, and even when she is ready to return home, she will likely be unable to care for herself without some assistance.

My father-in-law is as healthy as he has been for some time. At least, as far as his body goes. His heart is ailing. He has lived with the same woman for over 60 years, and now she’s out of the house. He could live alone, but the house is so… empty. He has never really cooked for himself. He is not so big on laundry. He comes from a generation where gender roles are very strictly defined. Sure, he can fix things that are broken, but that’s not enough.

Having a mate changes the way you live your life. You get used to it, after a while. When you live alone, who will steal the section of the paper you were reading? Who leaves the seat up/down on the toilet? Who will leave the dishes in the sink? The empty ice trays on the counter? The nearly empty gas tank? The box with 2 crackers left? Sure, sometimes we get aggravated by these little foibles and peculiarities, but after creating a rhythm or routine that incorporates them, their sudden removal leaves you tripping over yourself. At a time of stress, you feel those losses quite dearly.

When we were young and still searching for that ’someone’ we filled those empty moments. We filled the emptiness with the search itself. Once you’ve found that someone, the search is over, and you can’t pick it up again. When we were young, we filled the emptiness with drink. Now we’re too old for that. When we were young, we filled the emptiness with friends. At a certain age, you have few (if any) friends left.

You have family.

And so, we find ourselves, for a time at least, as an extended family. New members. New challenges. New arrangements. New schedules. Life moves quickly. Gotta keep up.

We’ve had quite a go with cellular phones. My son got his first cell phone when he was in Middle School. We got him a ‘pay as you go’ model just in case it got lost. Good thing, because within the first month of school, he had lost it. We did not replace it. We tried to cancel it, but by the time he admitted it was lost, all the minutes ($100 worth) had been used.

After a year without it, we decided to try it again. We got another ‘pay as you go’ phone. This one went a little better, lasting a few months until it was lost. An uncle looking for a cool gift got him a replacement which lasted for half a year until it was washed in the pocket of a pair of pants.

We did without until August of this year. With my son in High School and my daughter entering Middle School, we needed to get cell phones. Both are involved in after-school activities and often have changes in schedule. I did an extensive analysis of plans and costs and determined that the cheapest way to go was to get a pay-as-you-go plan for my daughter, while (gulp) adding my son to our plan. My biggest concern about adding him to the plan was a lost phone and the possibility of getting slammed by overage fees before actually finding out that the phone was missing.

However, my cell provider has changed it’s plans and may have saved me. T-Mobile has added a management system to Family Plans that allows me to lock down my son’s phone in a variety of ways. I can enable, limit, or disable text messaging by phone. I can limit how many shared minutes he can use each month. I can limit what hours the phone will work. I can set restrictions on who can be called. In amongst all of these limitations, I can set numbers that can work all the time.

I’ll explain. We had Unlimited Family Texting, but he was texting during class in school. Additionally, he was calling his girlfriend and talking to her long past he was supposedly going to bed. I went into the dashboard via the T-Mobile site and set the number of texts allowed each month to zero. Then I restricted the hours of use so the phone can only function between 3 and 11pm each night. However, I added all of our family cell phones, work numbers, and the home number as “always available” so if he needs to call at lunch, or if he is stuck at a party or a friends house after 11, he can still get through to us. Finally, because he shares 11 hours of minutes with Mom and I each month, I can limit him to no more than 4 of those hours. That way he doesn’t leave us with an end of month overage.

The site also now allows you to disable receipt of text messages. One problem we had previously was that his friends all had unlimited text messaging. He didn’t have ANY text messaging! They would send him a text message, which was free to them but cost me fifteen cents. With that fee now at twenty cents, something had to be done. I now have his phone set only to receive system messages from T-Mobile.

If your service does NOT allow this type of customization, call and ask when or if they will. Raise a ruckus. With these new limits set, I am considering adding my daughter’s phone to our plan as well. I figure that if I have to purchase minutes, I will spend $100 this year. If I add her to the plan, I will spend $120 and never have to worry whether she has enough minutes, whether she is wasting them, and I will actually have MORE control of her phone than I do now. Oh, if ONLY they had done this 3 months earlier, I could have saved about $50 and be done with the entire process.

I get this in one of my email accounts every year. I understand what it’s saying, and I’m not happy with the way the world is now, but it is not the same world you and I grew up in as children. In any case, either a frustrated coworker, an overwrought mom, or a lamenting dad shares their frustration with the changes in the world by sending this to everyone in their email list. As we commemorate 9/11 and the new and sometimes frightening world in which we live, let’s remember (hopefully with fondness) the world we knew so well when we grew up.

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930’s, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s!!

• We survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant.
• They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn’t get tested for diabetes.
• Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints.
• We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking.
• As infants &children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags.
• Riding in the back of a pickup on a warm day was always a special treat.
• We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.
• We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.
• We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank Kool-aid made with sugar, but we weren’t overweight because, WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!
• We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.
• No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.
• We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes! After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
• We did not have Playstations, Nintendo’s, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD’s, no surround-sound or CD’s, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or chat rooms…….
• WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!
• We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.
• We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.
• We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and, although we were told it would happen, we did not poke out very many eyes.
• We rode bikes or walked to a friend’s house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!
• Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn’t had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!
• The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!

These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever! The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL! If YOU are one them, CONGRATULATIONS!

A quote from Jay Leno:

With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another, and with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks, are we sure this is a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?