The Old Guard

This last spring break the girls and I loaded up the car, pointed it south, and headed to Kansas City, with the plan of spending the week there with our friends, Bill and Mary, seeing family, and celebrating St. Patrick’s day back home at one of the country’s largest such parades. With everything we had planned to do we were all a little excited to be on our way, and once we were finally able to hit the road, couldn’t wait to get to our destination. And—as a bonus—something remarkable happened along all those miles on the highway.

We talked.

Real, genuine conversation and everything.

I expected, as was usually the case on every previous drive, that the iPods would emerge as soon as we hit the city limits of Des Moines, and that this would be another one of those drives where I would get three hours of Contemplative Windshield Time while the girls blasted their eardrums and chomped away at their requisite snacks. But, had I been paying attention, I might have picked up on the hint or two from the few days before our departure that might have told me this trip was going to be something different and special.

The first such signal came in a phone call from Megan the previous Thursday. She was concerned she did not have anything appropriately green enough to wear to the St. Patrick’s Day parade.

“Dad, we need to go shopping,” she said, putting the characteristically long extension into her “shopping” to infer both excitement and connivance. She knew she had me. How could I not put her in sufficient green? That warm feeling of being both conned and spoiling arose.

The girls have always embraced their heritage with a certain amount of pride. I think it makes them feel like they own a little piece of something that sets them apart up here in the Near Great White North. We number fewer here, surrounded instead by a larger population of Danes, Swedes, and various other European cultures. For years I have been telling them about how big the celebration is back home, hoping that one day we would get to share it, maybe even incorporate it into our family traditions, but for one reason or another we never have made it back for this special celebration. Not until this year.

That conversation in the car should be something so remarkable may not be saying much about our communication between us all, but I would ask you to remember that I am the father of a Teen and a Tween. The younger has not yet tuned me out for Girl World, but the older most certainly has. So this time we spent (for lack of a less trite word) bonding, was golden for me.

It wasn’t that we just talked, it was more about the subjects we covered, which was the truly unique part. They seemed very interested in me, my life and times growing up in the Parkville area, and my friends. They had met Bill and Mary on a previous trip and were impressed, and they knew I had planned on them meeting several more of my friends while we were there this time, so some of this was pre-work, I imagine. Their curiosity about me and my younger life was heartwarming, to say the least, but I have to admit that it caught me a little off guard. I’d never seen it before this trip.

And, it wasn’t just the conversation and curiosity that made this particular drive vastly more interesting than all the previous, or more enjoyable. There were other things.

The car, somehow, was silently declared a No Conflict Zone. Neither Megan or Kylee antagonized, teased, bullied, or taunted, the other—nothing short of a modern day miracle.

We listened to music that ranged from Journey and Kansas to Dave Matthews and Black Eyed Peas. I don’t think anyone ever reached for their favorite radio stations, and nobody cared. In fact, nobody said a word when I actually sang along with some of my music, which was a previously forbidden indulgence.

Then, it only got better. At about the halfway point, my Facebook page lit up and the notices on my cell phone kept going off. Someone or something needed a reply, but I was too busy driving to answer, and so I handed the phone to Megan and asked her to answer for me. Then I asked her to change my status. Then, my brother, who had found me on Facebook several miles back, struck up a conversation, which I dictated and Megan typed. She became my little typing partner, and I could tell she was really enjoying it.

So it went, all the way into Kansas City, where we got out of the car at Bill and Mary’s on an incredible “We’re the Kilgores and We’re Here” high. But it was at about this same time, when I felt like breaking into a chorus of “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing,” from the old Coke commercial, when I also remembered a few anxieties I had about this trip.

Bill and Mary live an admirable lifestyle. They try to live as green as possible, make as little an environmental impact as they can, are very healthy with their diet, and don’t have cable TV. Megan and Kylee, on the other hand, are addicted to both meat and television and have never really been taught what I would call a consistently green-minded lifestyle. About the time that we all sat down to eat an incredible meal that Mary had expertly prepared I remembered all of this, and prepared myself for my new role as chief negotiator of the diet concerns. I imagined a meal, and a week ahead, where I would have to quiet whines about a lack of meat, no cable television, and constantly be reminding the girls about small things that might not respect our hosts lifestyle.

But it never happened. None of it. All week long, it never happened. At some point I was wondering if I had picked up the wrong girls in my sleepy and hasty departure from Des Moines, until the two of them reminded me the next morning that I had promised to take them shopping. Yep. Those are my girls.

Before that shopping, however, I was up early that morning and enjoying the quiet of the house. From Bill and Mary’s third-floor window there is an incredible view of the Kansas City skyline, framed by the river in the foreground, Park College (sorry, Park University, now) and its hills to the left, and Parkville with all its quaint little shops and homes to the right. The view was a piece of nostalgia, for me, and I had that comfortable feeling of being at home. Downstairs, I could hear the sounds of a couple getting ready for the day, attempting to do so quietly so as not to disturb their upstairs guests, I imagine. Funny, and a bit odd: that made me miss those things a little.

I had more quiet time downstairs with coffee, pen and paper, jotting notes of feelings and impressions of the trip thus far that eventually would become this piece, but I couldn’t bring myself to do much more than scribble. I was unplugged. The swirl of the world around me outside, and my life as usual, with all of its advanced communication and speed, was outside of my consciousness. It was bliss.

And the rest of the trip: well, it went exactly the same way. I never heard a single complaint from Megan or Kylee about anything the entire time we were there. The closest thing there was to conflict was in a little teasing about old houses, attics, orbs, and ghosts, with both girls making each other so nervous about it, we all ended up in the same bedroom the entire time. I really didn’t mind that.

We enjoyed that Monday together shopping a little, then traipsing from one house to another to have lunch with my father and Margaret, and then dinner with the rest of the family that evening. Tuesday was just as enjoyable, meeting Jack at O’Dowds so he and I could have corned beef and cabbage together (something I still cannot get the girls to at least try) and talk about times old and new. The girls’ ears perked up when Jack and I reminisced about some of our younger antics, like the time when he and I got shot at (with details of why we were there and with whom carefully edited out). Later that night, we met more family for dinner, but by late evening we were fairly tired from all the running to and fro, and so we enjoyed a couple of movies together while Bill and Mary were out to a concert.

The next morning was the parade, and despite having stayed up too late watching movies, the cool weather, and gloomy skies, the girls were up early and excited to get down to the parade. For all the preparation, they lasted about forty-five minutes in the weather before they finally admitted they wanted the warmth of the car. It didn’t matter, however. All I cared about was the fact that they wanted to go, wanted to be there, to experience it, and to experience it with me. That was huge. So, I put up only a little objection when they begged out of going to Minsky’s with me later that night to see more friends. I’d gotten my share.

I don’t think it was until the drive home that I got to think about everything that had been over the last week. There wasn’t as much conversation going home as there was coming down, as, in their fatigue, the girls reached for their iPods and napped for most of the way. I slipped in my Fleetwood Mac that I downloaded from Bill’s collection and dove into that Contemplative Windshield Time I enjoy.

At some point, while trying to think of what it was that prompted the girls to enjoy this trip so much, for us all to have such a great time together, I asked myself what I had done right. I wondered why it was the girls were putting more than the usual effort into coming toward me. And then, the mirror turned, and I recognized that I hadn’t necessarily done anything to make them enjoy it more, but instead they enjoyed it more because I was relaxed and doing so myself. I guess the stress and pressures of work and bills and this worry and that didn’t get hastily packed in that suitcase I threw together before rushing out the door. I left it there. And as a result, the girls got to be with Vacation Dad this time, and got the opportunity to get to know several sides of me, and several stories of me, they probably haven’t seen enough of until recently.

And I remembered something else from just the week before. A couple of Megan’s friends found my writing page on Facebook and became fans. I was concerned when I saw that happen, and wondered how Megan would feel about it. It was not something I had hid from her, and eventually wanted Kylee and her to see it and take it all in, but I worried if she would feel any embarrassment from it, from being a subject of all this sometimes. When I asked her about it, she said she didn’t care. I got the distinct impression she might have even read at least some of it.

But, that dad—the one they have read in those essays, and spent time with last week—I think they like that dad best, the one that is not necessarily a one-dimensional father figure, has a little more color, flair, and maybe depth. I think they’ve enjoyed getting to know him. I know I've enjoyed letting them in.

© 2010 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.