Several years ago my mom invited all the girls out to Utah for a fun girls' night in Salt Lake City. We left the kiddos at mom and dad's house with the men and stayed the night in a hotel downtown. When we returned the next morning we found the following scene:
Almost all of the kids were in the swimsuits and were covered in mud. Excepting Michael, who was in the same romper he'd been wearing the previous day. He was covered in mud and his romper was unsnapped and hanging down like a dress. My second brother's oldest daughter was wearing her swimming suit backwards and inside out. And, again, covered in mud. But that didn't matter. None of it did. Because they were all smiling & looking like they'd just had the best time of their lives. But the poor men looked like they'd been through war. So did the house. Trashed. Completely. Try to imagine it and you will be way off. Really. I think we may have got them in a little over their heads, but they didn't complain.
I think of that morning every time I see a dad show up to church alone with the kids. Mom is out of town and daddy is in charge. I grin and inspect the kids. The girls always suffer the most. Even with the list of instructions about 10 pages long that I imagine their wives left them, they can only do the best they know how. Putting a bow in a little girl's hair is not as easy as we moms make it look. Brushing the snarls out is near impossible without some sort of training. And finding clothes that fit the child is not necessarily a skill you're born with. These things take time to learn.
I'm sure bedtime routines are sort of skimmed over. Bedtime is either much later or earlier than it is when mom is home. The kids may or may not brush their teeth thoroughly. They may or may not brush their teeth at all. Try not to think about it. Breakfast is definitely not whole wheat toast, sliced fruit, and yogurt. Try pop tarts. The dinner plate may look a little different. No vegetable, starch, fruit, protein. Unless you count the tomato sauce on frozen pizza as a fruit and a vegetable.
And I'm sure those aren't the only areas in which these dads are sort of skimming over the list of instructions. Dads have a different agenda than moms. That's just the way it is. Moms, because we have these great maternal instincts, feel a grave responsibility to make sure our kids are clean, well fed, well mannered, smart, and dressed to the nines. Dads care basically about two things: that the kids are having fun and they, the dads, are having fun. And that is why we need dads. They make sure the kids get their unstructured, unplanned, spontaneous fun. Don't get me wrong-- we need moms, too, or our kids would go about wearing swimsuits inside out and backwards, covered in mud. But without dads I wouldn't have this grin on my face, thinking about my niece, her swimming suit inside out, backwards, covered in mud, a big smile on her face.
