No Shirt, No Shoes, Oh well

As a young father, I had this funny little olfactory habit.

Sitting in a law school classroom…

In my little poverty law office in Eastern Kentucky…

Delivering pizzas in Austin while studying for the bar…

Sitting in a courtroom in Dallas, nervously waiting my chance in front of the judge…

Whenever I was alone and away from my wife and young sons and feeling a little lost, I often turned to the yoke of my shirt for the reassurance of family and home, and knowing everything would be okay.

There, I gently inhaled the hugs, the tears, the napping drool, and the slight odor of regurgitated breast milk. These were not dirty work shirts, just lived in, with the faint remnants of my most important job, fathering. You know your love for your child is limitless when none of the smells coming from their bodies offends you in the slightest – are even savored as a tangible vaccine against self-doubt or worry.

These days when the boys are coming home, we encourage them to travel light. Despite our continuing War on Clutter and downsizing the archive of boy stuff, collected or left behind, there are still plenty of clothes here for them to wear.

I love it when one of them grabs one of my old flannel shirts to wear and I can say, “Hey, you threw up on that!”

I love it even more when they say “Do you still want this shirt?” And I reply, “No, it doesn’t fit me anymore. You can have it, it looks great on you.” Sometimes I wonder if they ever catch a faint whiff of mama’s milk. Maybe that sweet infant smell isn’t really in the shirt but worn in my memory.

As I drove Jonas, our youngest, to the airport this morning, we started laughing about a particularly poorly planned water polo trip he took in high school to California. It was a big deal but the night before my wife and I could sense he was being a little blasé’ about his packing.

He was of the age where we insisted he was responsible for his own packing. He had traveled quite a bit on his own to swim meets and water polo events and we were putting more and more responsibility on him. Being a busy teenager was not an excuse for failing to master adult life skills.

We were not hard-asses. We were watching just enough to be sure there were no critical errors (i.e. any mistakes that would cost us money) We didn’t insulate our boys from the pain and consequences of their own irresponsibility or lack of proper prior planning. Our philosophy had a good amount of, “Leap! and (if absolutely necessary) the net will appear!” We were their net but we wanted them to understand a half-ass leap did not guarantee a full and sturdy deployment of the net.

Two miles from the house on the way to the airport Jonas says, “Dad! I forgot my phone charger!” Being a Dad, who on occasion has forgotten his charger, I took a breath and pitied the boy.  I whipped in to a phone store two blocks later and bought the kid a charger and was back on the road to the airport in less than 5 minutes.

As I pulled up at the terminal to drop him off, he thanked me, gave me a kiss, jumped out, and I started to pull away. Suddenly, he whirled around, panic on his face, and yelled through the open window, “DAD! I need tennis shoes! We have to run a mile today when we get there! I forgot my shoes!”

“What shoes do you have?”

“Just these flip flops.”

My desire (anger?) to make this a teachable moment was choked by my desire to be the dad who always has an answer. I put the truck in park and pulled off the tennis shoes I was wearing and handed them to him. They were a half size or so too big but they beat running a mile barefoot. Jonas protested but I insisted.

“I don’t need shoes to drive home.”

He thanked me and told me he loved me three times and he was gone. I drove home feeling like Dad of the Year.

This morning, when we dropped him at the airport after a great long Christmas holiday visit, he had everything he needed and he was just as grateful and told us he loved us several times. As we hugged I could faintly smell that little boy sleeping on my shoulder. On the way out of the airport I was blotting the tears of pride with the yoke of my shirt.