Model Rockets

This year’s Fathers Day was slightly different for me than past years. I actually spent this Fathers Day more as a father than a son or grandson. Usually on the reserved Sunday in June I’m hauling the family from house to house appeasing and thanking those who’ve made a difference in my life or who I’m suppose to lead to believe they have. But this year I did any gift shopping early, dropped in the mail, and made phone calls as I spent the day with my own family. My wife confessed to me that this time of the year stresses her out because she never knows what to get me (Okay, I confess, I can be a bit picky), but I told her I really didn’t want anything this year. She insisted on getting something so our three year old son, Deuce aka Metric II, could give me something (he loves to give gifts and then tell you what it is while you’re opening it!) so I told her to grab me a couple of tee shirts. I also told her that I just wanted to spend time as a family, so we went to church and brunch and had my favorite…pancakes!

While driving home I thought of something, “I have a model rocket I can put together and take Deuce out to fly it.” So after a nap and a errand or two I sat at the kitchen table to assemble a favorite pastime of mine. I hadn’t put together a model rocket in over 20 years but I figured I had it down. The truth is it ended up taking me much longer than I anticipated; so long that the sun begin going down. But I was committed to fly this rocket for a few reasons: One, after I told Deuce about the rocket he reminded me every fifteen minutes about the “rocket ship that we were going to fly in”, and I wanted to keep my word to him. I want him to have the memories of doing stuff with his dad that I never had with mine. Secondly, I believe it was therapeutic and keeping me busy from the fact that I attempted to contact my father a couple of times that day to wish him a “Happy Fathers Day” and maybe stop by (he stays 15 minutes from me), but only got the voice mail and no returned phone call. I must admit that it hurts to continue trying to do my part in a relationship with no joint effort, but I’m trying to be the bigger man. So putting that rocket together for me was a legacy in the making; one that may continue when my son has a child of his own.

At about 9:20 PM I finished the rocket! I announced to my wife and son who then scurried to put on his shoes so we could go to the local park. It has a big field and I figured that if it was too dark I could keep the car headlights on to see. All three of us arrived at the park, jumped out the car, quickly paced to the middle of the field, and I begin to set up the launching pad for the rocket. After connecting the remote I told Deuce to come over so he could do the honors of pressing the launch button. I told him we’d countdown from 10 to 1 but soon realized that a three old usually can only count up to 10 so we did that. As we yelled out “Ten!” I showed him the launch button to push and when he did…nothing happened! I figured something wasn’t connected so I checked everything and was right. So I reconnected a fuse and we begin the process all over again. As Deuce pressed the launch button this time, nothing happened again! I was clueless, yet at the same time thinking that maybe I had bad batteries. After tinkering with it for I while I concluded that it was the launcher and would have to exchange it.

I regrettably told Deuce that we would have to launch the rocket the next day, but at that moment I saw something: Deuce wasn’t disappointed. Though he wanted to see the “rocket ship” go into space he was having enough fun being outside past bedtime and running around in a big field. As we returned home, put Deuce to bed, and sat on the couch my wife asked me if I was upset that the rocket didn’t work. In that moment I thought about my childhood, my strained relationship with my father, the unanswered phone calls, how Fathers Day is usually a drag for me, and the excitement of Deuce at the anticipation of us doing something together, and I told her that I wasn’t upset about it. I learned this Fathers Day that being a father is more about the journey than any destination…and about going to the store to exchange model rocket parts.

Always Consider The Source

I’ve been told some pretty amazing thing in my life; people seeing demons, tales of unimaginable human feats, and even “stories” about myself! Often I accepted the information at face value never second-guessing nor verifying it, but of lately I’ve really been on a quest to do my on “fact finding” missions when someone decides to include me in on the latest and greatest news.

It started when I begin reading this book about how to read the bible (imagine that!) and in this book the author begin to dispel many conventional thoughts of some commonly known bible stories. At first I challenged it thinking “These liberals just want to tear the Bible apart!”, but as I continued reading and confirming their conclusions I reached the point of an epiphany: “Maybe much of what I’ve been told all of my isn’t totally true…” This sent me in a tailspin; going through notes, revisiting previously read books, and conducting impromptu interviews to find out how this could be! The realization I came to was startling: much of what I’ve come to believe as truth came from people who ALSO believed it to be true. This wasn’t some sort of “Malcolm X in prison realizing that all black people had been bamboozled by the white man” type realization, but one of coming to grips with the fact that many good intentioned people in my life had neglected to factor in one important step in the process of revelation: to consider the source.

It scares me how often we believe so much of what is fed to us without taking the time to confirm it. Now, I don’t believe we should become neurotic conspiracy theory skeptics, but I do believe that we should at least use common sense (and a bit of logic) before we begin passing information along. Because I’m a parent now, this really forces me to grapple with this because God-forbid I have children going around naively believing everything they hear.

So the next time you read your favorite gossip column about “who’s out of the closet now”, your Inbox welcomes that “unbelievable” e-mail to receive a free computer if you forward the e-mail to ten people, or you hear that family member describing your father as a jerk who hates your existence, consider the source. In every matter of life there’s only ONE truth…the rest, well, makes for a good story.