For those of you who don't know, I come from a clan of women. For many years my father was the only male member of our family. There were grandmothers, a great-grandmother, an aunt, a niece and daughters but no other males. My poor father swam a sea of estrogen everyday. Cursed by the trappings of bras, tampons and PMS, my poor dad rarely found peace – or private bathroom time.
Only twice can I recall Daddy making any kind of fuss over the girly products strewn throughout our home. Both times he had every right to lose his shit, yet every time I retell these two stories I end up laughing myself into a asthma attack. Befitting, don't you think?
Perhaps the most epic moment occurred when either my sisters or myself left dissolvable bath beads in bottom of a damp tub. After a long day of farming Daddy went to get a hot bath. Apparently, the beads were oil-based and had created a super slick surface and when he stepped into the tub his feet slid out from under him. He hit both elbows on the sides of the iron, claw foot tub then nearly drown when a tsunami of displaced water came rolling back over his head. My mother found him gasping for breath on the bathroom floor and swearing incoherently about beads, broken elbows and "a man's right to bathe in peace."
The other unfortunate incident involved him brushing his teeth in the dark because one of us girls had thrown a breaker while blow-drying our hair. In his haste to finish up in the bathroom, he grabbed what he thought was Crest and loaded his toothbrush. It wasn't until he'd filled his mouth with a bitter, non-toothpaste taste that he realized something was amiss. By this time one of us had flipped the breaker. When the lights came back on he discovered he'd been brushing his teeth with Gyne-Lotrimin – yeast infection medication, for you male readers. I don't recall any angry rants that day, but I am pretty sure he yacked.
And those are just the grandest of moments in Big Rick's Adventures of Living With Women. I won't even mention all football and baseball games we whined about because we wanted to watch a beauty pageant or Punky Brewster or some other 1980s girly shit. Nor shall we discuss the time he went squirrel hunting and my sister cried when she saw all the little fluffy rodents he'd killed. So we had a to a squirrel funeral. Or the time I when I was about four years old and left under his supervision for a couple of hours while Mama did some grocery shopping. My mother returned home to find me sitting on the beanbag with a pair of scissors and surrounded by clumps of my long, strawberry blond hair. (Mama is still mad about that, by the way.)
Overall, I think Daddy's been a pretty good sport about it all. We were enough to break any man's spirit, but – bless his heart -- he embraced his girls, braided hair and wasn't afraid of purchasing feminine hygiene products when necessary.
As reward for his 30 years of abuse at the hands of the women in his life, I'm pretty sure God saw fit to reward him by making his first grandchild a grandson.
My sister – the mother of his grand boy – wrote a really sweet blog about my mother yesterday who is in Virginia helping my sis care for her newborn.
Only twice can I recall Daddy making any kind of fuss over the girly products strewn throughout our home. Both times he had every right to lose his shit, yet every time I retell these two stories I end up laughing myself into a asthma attack. Befitting, don't you think?
Perhaps the most epic moment occurred when either my sisters or myself left dissolvable bath beads in bottom of a damp tub. After a long day of farming Daddy went to get a hot bath. Apparently, the beads were oil-based and had created a super slick surface and when he stepped into the tub his feet slid out from under him. He hit both elbows on the sides of the iron, claw foot tub then nearly drown when a tsunami of displaced water came rolling back over his head. My mother found him gasping for breath on the bathroom floor and swearing incoherently about beads, broken elbows and "a man's right to bathe in peace."
The other unfortunate incident involved him brushing his teeth in the dark because one of us girls had thrown a breaker while blow-drying our hair. In his haste to finish up in the bathroom, he grabbed what he thought was Crest and loaded his toothbrush. It wasn't until he'd filled his mouth with a bitter, non-toothpaste taste that he realized something was amiss. By this time one of us had flipped the breaker. When the lights came back on he discovered he'd been brushing his teeth with Gyne-Lotrimin – yeast infection medication, for you male readers. I don't recall any angry rants that day, but I am pretty sure he yacked.
And those are just the grandest of moments in Big Rick's Adventures of Living With Women. I won't even mention all football and baseball games we whined about because we wanted to watch a beauty pageant or Punky Brewster or some other 1980s girly shit. Nor shall we discuss the time he went squirrel hunting and my sister cried when she saw all the little fluffy rodents he'd killed. So we had a to a squirrel funeral. Or the time I when I was about four years old and left under his supervision for a couple of hours while Mama did some grocery shopping. My mother returned home to find me sitting on the beanbag with a pair of scissors and surrounded by clumps of my long, strawberry blond hair. (Mama is still mad about that, by the way.)
Overall, I think Daddy's been a pretty good sport about it all. We were enough to break any man's spirit, but – bless his heart -- he embraced his girls, braided hair and wasn't afraid of purchasing feminine hygiene products when necessary.
As reward for his 30 years of abuse at the hands of the women in his life, I'm pretty sure God saw fit to reward him by making his first grandchild a grandson.
My sister – the mother of his grand boy – wrote a really sweet blog about my mother yesterday who is in Virginia helping my sis care for her newborn.
- Granny Lady is still going strong. That lady is so much tougher than I am. She has been doing all of the cooking, cleaning, and shopping and has taken turns with rocking Jonathan. I am so thankful to have her with me. She has made all the difference in the world. I am lucky to have such a great Mom. I just hope I am as good a Mom to Jonathan as she is to me.
Then Madge followed up with a really special blog about family where she references how special my parents are to her. After I read it, she and I were talking online last night and she typed maybe one of the most heartfelt sentences I have ever received.
- I was always jealous of how great your parents are. Your mama and daddy were better parents to me than my own. They were so good to me and that couldn't have been easy. They really raised us right.
And so it is that I am thinking about parents and siblings and how I don't really feel like a grown up even though I am approaching 30 years of age. Mama and Daddy might not have been perfect, but they sure did know how to love us and support us in the ways that mattered. They taught me to be strong, independent and to love myself. Which – in the words of Madge – "couldn't have been easy."
I don't know if I'll ever be a parent, but if I am I hope half as good as the two people that raised me.
2 comments:
Rick had a good teacher. His father-in-law was also "blessed" with a lot of women and the "stuff" that does with them. Old Rick has been a good sport about it all over the years and has passed the talent for living with women to his son-in-laws. So I guess the guys deserve a little boy to teach the male type stuff.
Auntie
well that about covers the bathroom problems with the exception of one. that would be the time the toilet got stopped up due to stranger coming into our house and flushing a couple hundred tampons. what a frigging nightmare. like to never got those things out of the concrete pipe. i was a little pissed off about that.
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