Backpacking Dad

Today I will enjoy my second Father's Day. I have decided, after much pressuring to just make up my frickin' mind already, that I will have breakfast with Erin and Emily, take a long bike ride in the hills behind Menlo Park and Redwood City, and then take Erin to some farmzooment park called Happy Hollow.

I'm supposed to be relaxing all day, right? No.

For a lot of dads Father's Day means a day off, which means more time spent with family. I can't really take a day off, because if I did that would mean less time spent with my family.

And there are other people involved in making me a father: Emily, of course, who stayed married to me for a long time, deciding every day whether or not she still liked me enough to keep me around (I always squeaked by); and Erin.

I've been listening to that Barenaked Ladies CD a lot over the last few days, and there is one song in particular that stays in my head. It's the short one, and it goes:

There are things that make me mad

You are not one of them.

There are things that make me sad

You are not one of them.

There are things that make me Dad

You seem to be all of them.

As I said, I'm pretty sure Emily had a lot to do with it, but the song tells a heart-truth.

So, because Erin plays as big a role in my being a father as I do, I'm pretty sure that making sure that she has a great day is just as important as basking in the adoration of my family. On Father's Day least of all can I choose to not be a father.

So we're going to Happy Hollow and she'll pet some goats or something; make friends with a chicken, then eat it.

And I'll carry her around like I do every day, and I'll tell her that I love her over and over again, and I'll laugh at how cute she is when she says "Moooooo!"

I do get some time, just for me, though. I don't need the whole day, but I'll take part of it. That's a little gift for me.

Erin will be very hard pressed to ever top her very first Father's Day present to me, however.

We were somewhere between the Grapevine and Gilroy on I-5 on the night before Father's Day last year. We thought we'd make it home, but we ate something unfortunate and just had to lay low for the night. So we found a highway hotel and settled in.

It was the end of Erin's first trip to Disneyland; she was seven and half weeks old, and I was seven and a half weeks new as a dad. As we readied ourselves for bed I played with Erin as I had been doing for about 53 days. I prompted her to say "Hi Daddy" as I had been doing since she began babbling a few weeks earlier: Every sound she made was a word, so I thought. "She's going to be talking any day now, self," I said frequently to myself.

"Hi da-ee."

Wha? Gah! Holy crap!

I looked up at Emily and she stared back, absolutely stunned.

"I would never have believed you if you told me she said that and I hadn't been here."

No kidding.

So, Erin's first Father's Day present to me was to look me straight in the eye and say "Hi da-ee".

I then used up an hour and a half of space on the camcorder trying to catch her saying it again. She didn't repeat it until six months later, at Christmas. Again, when I didn't have the camera on her, although Emily Coda'd her previous statement.

It was great hearing it the second time. But, that's the last time I let her get me the same thing for two gift-giving holidays in the same year.

Two presents, kid. My birthday is in there too. I like books.

"Happy Father's Day, guys."

You said it, baby girl.

I took a call from one of my mom friends today (aside: took a call? really? ought I to have had my assistant check to see if I was available?) and she told me that Barenaked Ladies were promoting their Snacktime CD at the Barnes & Noble at the Hillsdale shopping center.

Sweet.

Sweet because I'm so Canadian, and so Ontarian, that I had a copy of their demo in high school; not a demo tape, but a copy of a demo tape. My friend made it for me and we listened to it on a drive to Toronto to go watch the Victoria Cup game at Skydome. Those were the years during which geeky pop-folk groups like BNL and Moxy Fruvous and The Arrogant Worms were just about to break, and I had demo tapes (or copies of demo tapes) for all of them. They were like memes, passed from friend to friend, and you were definitely paying attention to the music scene if you knew who they were before they popped up on Much Music. (another aside: Mike from the Arrogant Worms used to tend bar at the Grad Club at Queens and the Worms were campus folk heroes on par in Kingston with The Tragically Hip, okay, that's an exaggeration, but they were big for a couple of years (an aside within an aside: The Hip went to my high school....a couple of years before I got there...dammit) and I had a couple of good nights underaged at the Grad Club watching them play because my dad's girlfriend was friends with him.)

So, fast forward, oh, fifteen or sixteen years (holy crap) and there I was, with Erin on my back, my Californian wife standing by my side as we bopped along to BNL as they played "If I had $1 000 000". Emily remarked that (a) they could have sold tickets and done an actual show instead of a 30 minute spot at a bookstore, and (b) it was kind of sad that they were doing a 30 minute spot at a bookstore instead of selling out a concert venue somewhere like the goddamned Wiggles. I chose to see them as completely in love with performing for small groups.

Erin was rocking out, dancing from side to side in the backpack, making faces at her baby friends who were there with us. It was a perfect little family moment, and I felt like a pretty good dad.

This was the closest we got, and the best picture I could take on my Blackberry with the freakin' window in the background saturating the screen:

We went downstairs. One of our mom friends left, the other jumped into the cashier line, holding her son while pushing the stroller, and we grabbed a CD from a box at Information and went to check out. There was a woman with a stroller and a walking kid behind our friend, so we lined up behind her (actually, kind of at a right angle to her). Mom-friend saw that I had a CD already and asked where I found it. I pointed back at Information; she looked torn. I asked her if she wanted to go grab one, and she said "sure" and walked over.

She left her stroller in line (I had kind of moved toward it when I asked if she wanted to grab a CD), so I pushed it through until we were up front. We were just at the register when she came back, sans CD, and I noticed that they had a box of them at the register, so she picked one up at the front. We paid for our purchases and walked toward the entrance.

Wow. Exciting right? This is, so far, the best story I've ever told, yes?No? Fine.

How about if I tell you that while I was pushing the stroller toward the register I looked back at the woman we had originally lined up behind, and noticed that she was not, in fact, pushing a stroller.

She was pushing a wheelchair, and in the wheelchair was her severely disabled nine or ten year-old daughter.

Yeah, I noticed. And I continued through the line, all the way up to the register, paid for my CD, and joined Emily at the exit.

"So, I totally line-jumped that woman we were standing behind."

"Yeah you did."

"I swear I didn't realize it until we were almost at the register."

"Well, the point at which you realized it would have been a great moment to let her go ahead of you."

"Yeah, but..."

Crap.

There is no but. Except for me, and I'm more of an ass.

I turned around and caught the woman before she reached the exit.

"Ma'am? I'm so sorry; I completely stole your place in line. It was pretty rude and I'd like to apologize."

She played it off casually, pretending to be surprised that I had anything to apologize for: "Oh, that's ok. I didn't even notice. More time in the air-conditioned building anyway."

I walked back to Emily, feeling very proud of myself. I had manned up and apologized for being a total ass-hat. I had done it with nothing to gain except self-respect and the respect of my loving wife. A big grin started to break across my face as I saw Emily smiling at me.

I should have realized that it wasn't her loving smile; it was her "I'm on to you" smile.

"Well, now you're not going straight to hell."

Yeah.

Good concert. They could have sold tickets.

I know I said I wanted to keep the hockey stuff over at the other blog, but I just have to share this one here.

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Game 7 is over, and the San Jose Sharks have just finished off the Calgary Flames.

The camera is on the hand-shake lineup, and the focus keeps switching back to Owen Nolan's face. He's disappointed, obviously, having joined a Calgary team that seemed to have a shot at going deep in the playoffs even though they drew the hottest team in the NHL going down the stretch.

Owen Nolan. Who was a superstar in San Jose for years. Who still keeps a home here. Who famously called his shot in an All-Star game played on home ice in 1997. When he was a Shark.

He's in San Jose tonight, looking tired. A nasty red mark graces his left cheek. He was in San Jose in 1996 when I moved here for the first time, and he was new himself, having been traded from the soon-to-be Stanley Cup Champion Avalanche. I watched his Sharks play in the Shark Tank, and I cheered for him. I could care less about the Sharks.

I cheered because every time he touched the ice I was transported back to my childhood, when I could watch Owen Nolan play for the OHL team in my small, smelly town. He was the star of the Cornwall Royals before being drafted first overall. He was the rookie of the year in the OHL in 1989. And just as he would someday be an All-Star in the NHL, one night he was the star of the 1990 All-Star game between the OHL and the QMJHL, played that year in my smelly little town.

After that game the goalie coach conspired to deliver a stick to me: the OHL goaltender's stick, signed by the winning goalie, Fife, I believe his name to be. That was nice. It was a game-used stick. It was signed just for me, a 12-year old kid who was finally getting excited about hockey.

After the game my mother took me to Cornwall BBQ for a very late dinner. I carried my stick in with me and sat it down at the table. And just as we started eating a family walked in to the restaurant; jovial, starving, and beaming. And the big kid, all of 18 years old, who walked in with them was Owen Nolan.

I saw him, and stammered "That's Owen Nolan." My mother, because she is my mother, said "You should go talk to him."

"What? I can't talk to him. He's with his family, and they're just here to eat."

And because when my mother looked at him she saw an 18-year old kid and a family flushed with pride instead of a hockey god on earth, as I did, she pushed it: "I think his family would be really happy for him to see you come up to him here. Just tell him you are a big fan."

Reluctantly, but excitedly, I gave in. I picked up my bulky goalie stick, and walked into the other dining room, where Owen Nolan, my hockey hero, was sitting with his family.

"Hi, um, Owen?"

"Yes. Hello there."

"Um, I uh, just wanted to tell you that you played a great game."

"Thanks very much."

"And, uh, I was um hoping that you might sign this stick. It'sthegoaliestickPaulDesjardinsgaveittome." This last in a rush of hopeful name-dropping. Paul was the goalie coach for the Royals, and was a family friend.

"Sure. I'd love to."

"Thanks Owen. I'll see you around." And then, elated, I returned to my table with my now sacred trophy in tow.

For 18 years I've carried that memory around with me, close; closer than the stick with his autograph, which was lost in a frantic move about a year later. He's probably had hundreds of encounters like that; I've only had the one. I think I've mentioned it so many times to my wife that it grates on her nerves a little. Whenever his name is mentioned on television she says "Hey look! It's your buddy."

She teases.

But. For that night he was my buddy.

And tonight he's disappointed that his team won't be going on to the next round of the Playoffs.

But tonight I'd like to say, as I did 18 years ago: "You played a great game."