The spirit is unwilling

Every so often, our schools have “Spirit Week.” Students are encouraged to dress within a common guideline each day.  I’m unsure what spirits they’re conjuring, but it hardly seems like school spirit. One day is for wearing school colors, but the other four could more accurately be termed “Dress Up Week.”

Our older two boys were, to put it mildly, never very keen on Spirit Week. Big Brother tried it in kindergarten. After one Spirit Week, the thrill was gone. It was too much like homework.

Buster was never interested. If you’d asked him about Spirit Week, Buster would have replied, “I don’t know what it is; I don’t know when it is; and I don’t care.” Maybe you can see why Buster is a Gen X dad’s delight.

Big Man, the youngest of the three, is more interested in Spirit Week, though not fully indoctrinated into the cult of uniformity. He does not always observe a full Spirit Week, but on occasion he remembers that he’s supposed to wear a tie-dye T-shirt on a given day.

Unfortunately, he remembers this within two minutes of needing to leave for school.

Also unfortunate, his dad ranks Spirit Week low on the list of events worthy of last-minute disruption. His mom, though more sympathetic to the cause, is not prepared for an unexpected deep dive into the closet when she’s holding car keys in her hand.

This leads to Spirit Morning Strife.

Exhibit: Thursday, September 24, 2026.

At school commute -3 minutes, I was informed that it was “Anything but Backpack” day.

When I was a kid, nobody wore a backpack. We carried only what we needed at any given time. I wish it were that way still, but it’s not. Young hermit crabs, carry all their belongings on their backs. I don’t love it, but I’ve accepted it. A backpack is core to the routine.

Except this day. With tardiness looming, our kid announced that he must transport everything in his backpack to school in something that was not his backpack.

Once we get the laptop, gym shoes, and sweatshirts packed, we can move on to the real school supplies.

I told him he had two minutes to find a substitute.

“Daa’ aad!” he whined in the tone that attempts to dump responsibility for his fiascos on my shoulders.

I said he might better just use his backpack, but he was invested in this ill-conceived special occasion.

He tried a picnic cooler, which fit his water bottle and nothing else.

“Use a garbage bag,” I said.

He shuddered and attempted a wicker basket, which was too awkward even for him.

Mom appeared, noted the spilled backpack contents, and raised her voice. After the squall, she used some mom magic to produce, from thin air, a huge food service bag with straps.

Big Man frowned as his parents’ faces told him this was his last option.

The sulking boy loaded school supplies into the bag. He was last seen lumbering behind and tripping over the unwieldy parcel that would make him late for this episode of Spirit Week.

I’m glad I was young at a time when our schools left us responsible for our own morale.

That was now; this is then

In June, 2013, I posted this: Eavesdropping on the class of 2026. It was a conversation between Big Brother and his best friend, two months before they started kindergarten. Last week, Big Brother graduated high school.

In 2013, the class of 2026 was a nebulous concoction of little children. It was little more than an idea about an entity so far away as to be thought of as infinitely distant.

Last week the class of 2026 wrote its name in stone, when Big Brother and his classmates walked across the stage.

The come-to-fruition class of 2026 is an accomplishment, a relief, a new beginning, and a bunch of other good things. It is also a gentle sadness for things lost to the greedy arms of history.

In 2013, it was hard to imagine Big Brother as a high school graduate. It was hard to see him as a middle-schooler. In a different way, it is now difficult to picture him as that little guy who snuggled between mom and dad on the couch. Sure, there are pictures and videos, but we can never hold that soft, little hand again. We can’t carry that peaceful, tiny bundle up to bed. I certainly can’t lift him out of bed anymore; my back and I learned that lesson around the time he became a sleepy teenager.

In that year before Big Brother’s Kindergarten matriculation, Buster was still a toddler, Big Man was not born yet. Mom was at home with her little boys, and the spare tire around Dad’s belly was still the small kind you can’t drive faster than 50mph on. Though I’m a little rounder with time, I had already reached peak baldness back then.

As Big Brother sets his sights on college, Buster is a summer away from high school. Big Man is equally near to junior high. Mom has been back to her career for seven years. Instead of blogging with disciplined regularity, I spend my time signing field trip permission slips.

It will be another four years before Buster graduates from high school, and two additional for Big Man. There will be many hectic, stressful days in those six years. Day to day, it will seem a slow slog, until all the slogs have melted suddenly into a blink.

How did 2030 get here already? Or 2032? I can’t prove that they are here as readily as I can prove 2026, but they are here. They just haven’t revealed themselves yet. 2013 is still here; it just drifted away a little so that it’s a bit fuzzy through the mist.

I can’t reach 2013 anymore. I can’t hold onto the little boy there. But I can still hear his laughter.

Halloween relic

Halloween came and went, and it took something with it.

Halloween gave us candy. In exchange it took part of my fatherhood experience away.

For the first time in 17 years, I did not go Trick or Treating. I was no longer needed.

Once upon a time, I pulled a wagon, with a baby passenger, from house to house. I walked with a toddler, holding his hand, until he asked to be carried home. I brought the younger brother, hurrying with him, so the older brother didn’t get too frustrated by the anchor around his candy-gathering ankles. I flitted among three boys of varying ages and speeds, struggling to keep the herd together as three lengths of legs progressed at different strides, slowing down the fast and speeding up the slow so that no one got lost and no one lost faith.

It was exhausting; it was wonderful. Everyone needed Dad to facilitate the fun. As the night grew dark, no one worried, as long as Dad was in sight. Dad was always in sight, because these were his boys, and this was them together.

More than any of them, Dad wished to stay out until Trick or Treat was officially ended. This unifying quest was two fleeting hours, and when it ended, it was ended for an entire year.

After Halloween last year, it ended for always.

Perhaps, Dad should have known, but the hope for one more time is difficult to subdue.

This year, the two boys who still had interest in Trick or Treat, looted the neighborhood under their own authority, which was only right. They had grown into that freedom. They ran with their own pack, as time had long determined they should do.

Dad stayed home, warm and dry, as old people should be kept. He had no more babies to protect. Only memories of babies. Memories don’t make new memories; they stay home too.

One more thing put away in the scrap book, the way it was always meant to be. But I claim the right to cling to the fraying strand of nostalgia.

The way we were.

Don’t bring a knife to a baguette fight

It was Tuesday when I cut my hand on a piece of bread.

This tragedy requires a bit of backstory.

I bought the bread, a $1.49 grocery store baguette, on Sunday morning.

Big Man, who still refuses to eat middle school cafeteria lunches, asked for roast beef for his sandwiches this week. I don’t like paying roast beef prices, but it’s the start of the school year, and maybe this little luxury will help him let go the utopia of summer and ease back into the drudgery of school.

Next week, when summer is a distant memory, we downgrade to ham.

The sliced roast beef looked exceptionally good, lean and red (a rarity in our town). Maybe I too would like a sandwich for some near future lunch.

The kids are happy eating the preservative-doused sliced bread, but if I’ve got to take out a second mortgage to pay for the meat, my sandwich should be on bread with enough dignity to die young.

I picked out a baguette; little did I know, it didn’t want to die alone.

Bread of character, even third-rate, store brand, character, should be eaten in one day. That didn’t happen.

On Monday, Big Man chose to have his sandwich on a hunk of baguette. I didn’t have a chance to make my sandwich. This was my undoing.

On Tuesday, half the baguette remained. I tried to get the boy take it again. “No,” he said. “That bread’s too hard.” I didn’t see the warning in his wise words.

At lunchtime, I cut off a hunk of the aging bread for my sandwich. The previously cut end was too hard to possibly enjoy. I must cut a bit off that end. Though my knife seemed sharp, it struggled through the crust.

I needed more leverage. Leverage is key with baguettes.

This is why I picked the bread off the plate and held it tight in my left hand as I sawed at the end with my right. Finally, I was cutting through it.

And then calamity struck.

The bit at the end gave way. The long piece I was holding in my left hand crashed into the side of my right hand. That’s when I learned that I had not cut off enough. A still hard, and now sharp, edge of crust dug into the skin of my right hand, leaving a splinter of crumb under the layers of scraped skin.

Don’t mock me for my delicate hands. They’re soft, lovely hands that any man would be proud of.

Ah, but I had the last laugh against the bread that bit me. I bit it back many times, with pleasure, and roast beef. I bit it until it was nothing. (After having put it in the microwave to soften it up; I do learn my lesson sometimes.)

Revenge!