Tag: Lydia

The Lydster: Roger as Atticus Finch

“Atticus was feeble; he was nearly fifty”

The Daughter has started calling me “Roger” about half the time in the past few months. It doesn’t particular bother me.

I think it came about when we were in a crowded school setting, and she called “Daddy, daddy.” But there were lots of other dads and I guess I didn’t hear it. Finally, she said “Roger!” and of course I heard that.

One of my sisters is all distressed about it because she feels as though my daughter is showing disrespect. Well, maybe, but I think she’s just testing my limits.

Interesting that she almost never calls her mother by her first name, but “Mom”, or, very occasional, “mommy.” She says that all the kids in school her age are going through the same conundrum of what to call their parents that isn’t too juvenile (Mommy, Daddy), too formal (Mother, Father) or otherwise uncomfortable.

Her class had been reading To Kill A Mockingbird, and I was struck by the descriptions in Chapter 10:

“Atticus was feeble; he was nearly fifty… He was much older than my school contemporaries.” Like the attorney, I AM too old to do all the things the Daughter wants to do. And just as Scout an Jem called their father by his first name, so does the Daughter, unless she wants something or needs something, or is tired or hurting; then it’s “daddy.”

Of course, like Atticus Finch, I do have my skills, even if the Daughter is currently unappreciative. It’s true that I don’t remember the names of the members of her favorite K-Pop bands such as BTS or Astro.

But who is helping her with algebra homework, a subject he hasn’t studied in a half century? Who can name not just the first four Presidents, primarily from listening to Hamilton incessantly, but all of them?

The difference in our ages is, of course, something I can’t change. I consider it an asset rather than a liability. There are days when I can remember a piece of history first-hand; that is useful.

The Lydster: worrying about the Daughter

Teenage boys are annoying creatures.

When I told someone that my daughter was sick in November, for the third month in a row, I was asked, “Am I worried about her?” The answer was, “No, not really.”

In that iteration, it was the same bug that her mother had, only my wife had it a couple days earlier. And other people in church and elsewhere in my circle experienced the same symptoms in the week or two before.

I DID worry that my wife had recovered enough. I was away in Syracuse and Binghamton so couldn’t tend to them.

Now, I WAS worried in October when the treatment of what turned out to be the Daughter’s slowly-developing asthma attack. I felt it was misdiagnosed early, and I felt helpless.

The Daughter wanted to go to the Donald Trump rally in April 2016 in Albany. I said no, not because of his politics – I was rather interested in seeing the phenomenon in person myself – but because I was worried that she (or I) might have been attacked, as some people had been in other venues.

I’m told that some white people see black young people as being older than they are. See, for example, 12-year-old Tamir Rice of Cleveland, who was reported as a man with a gun and ended up dead by police. So I figured my daughter, who was 5’8″ at the time might have been seen, for some reason, as antagonistic to some Trump supporters, and I wasn’t willing to risk it.

Instead, we went to the Bernie Sanders rally that day, and though we didn’t get in, he came outside to give his 7-minute stump speech, one of the highlights of her past year.

Of course, I worry about teenage boys, just by virtue of their boyness. Teenage boys are annoying creatures. Having been one myself, I can testify that this is true.

A buddy of mine wrote about worrying, and I said that it is highly overrated. But worrying about the Daughter just comes with the territory.

The Lydster: crime-scene tape

I suggested, jokingly – I THINK it as jokingly – that we should chuck our garbage in their Dumpster.

One of the things the Daughter knows about me is that I’m far less likely to get irritated by something I see if I’ve been given fair warning. So one consecutive days in November, she called me at the office after she got home from school.

The first time was to tell me that there was yellow, crime-scene tape running from our neighbor’s porch to ours, blocking the walkway between the two residences. And why was this? Because contractors, in the process of fixing their roof, had thrown down the old roofing material from that roof to said walkway.

And did the absentee landlord bother to let us know that this was going to happening? He did not. The only warning was the load of materials sitting on their lawn for about a week earlier.

The second time the Daughter called me was to tell me that the tape was gone, as was some of the debris, but that there was a Dumpster parked, partially on the neighbor’s lawn but mostly on ours, blocking, yet again, the walkway.

This meant, again, walking my bike through the house to the shed in the back yard.

By the time I had gotten home, my wife explained to the contractors where the property line was. (But did they REALLY think the neighbor’s property line extended to the porch railing of OUR house?)

In any case, the Dumpster left the next day, only to return the following day. At least it was entirely off our property. And there it stayed for weeks, as a cold snap scuttled their plans to work on the roof. It looked atrocious out there, this orange behemoth, but what is there to do? Get in contact with defense lawyers and fight for your rights with the best legal advice.

I suggested, jokingly – I THINK it as jokingly – that we should chuck our garbage in their Dumpster. Of course I didn’t.

Still, I’m glad The Daughter gave me the heads-up, twice, regarding our insensitive neighbor.

The Lydster: the 11th-hour homework

In this matter, she is VERY much her own person.

The Daughter and I are alike in many ways. One of the way we are not is in the approach to homework.

When I had it, I tried to get it done as soon as possible, lest it hang over my head. Her attitude is more… relaxed.

Back on November 9, I asked her if she had any homework over the three-day Veterans Day holiday, but she gave me a rather enigmatic answer. It was HER homework, after all, so I was not going to worry about it.

Still, on Friday the 10th, I asked her again. This time, she said, “The marking period ends today.” And do you have homework? “Yes, social studies.”

Well, how was she going to get this assignment done THAT DAY, when there was no school? Why, she could send it via Google docs. So at 3 p.m., she starts answering four questions, about Reconstruction after the Civil War, robber barons of the second half of the 19th century, and a couple other topics.

She completed the assignments. “There, an hour and a half and I’m done.”

I should note that at least one of these pieces was given out back when she was ill the second week in October, and I know she had started working on it when she got back to school the following week. But it was only the impending end of the marking period that motivated her to actually FINISH the task.

It is very easy for a person to project him- or herself in a situation and say, “If it were me, I’d have been a nervous wreck.” But that’s the point; she isn’t me.

And she isn’t her mother either who, less often these days than before, would preach the value of having the homework put away the night before in the proper place. I’d be my inclination, too.

As I’ve indicated, in this matter, she is VERY much her own person.

The Lydster: when your heroes have feet of clay

You DON’T know the people you see on TV or listen to on the radio.

Our family has developed a ritual of turning on CBS News This Morning to watch the 7 a.m. “eye-opener.” The morning of Tuesday, November 21, the Daughter noticed that Charlie Rose, co-anchor of the program wasn’t on, which wasn’t that odd.

What WAS unusual was the fact that in that segment of “your world in 90 seconds,” Charlie Rose DID appear. He had been suspended by CBS News the night before over sexual misconduct, as reported in the Washington Post, part of a string of men caught up recently. A reporter laid out the case, and then the other co-hosts, Norah O’Donnell and Gayle King, forcefully showed their disdain and shock.

And while she hadn’t said anything at the time, I could see the Daughter was confused and disappointed. I’ll admit I was, and that went for my wife as well. What I didn’t know at the time was that, a couple years prior, she’d written some report for school about the now-75-year-old anchor and contributor on 60 Minutes.

It’s that weird thing about how you begin to feel about people when you metaphorically let them into your home. You get a sense that you know a person. Heck, Norah and especially Gayle had expressed shock at the allegations, and they worked with the man for five years.

The initial allegations concerned his show put together by his production company, and airing on PBS and Bloomburg, prior to 2011. By the time he was fired, less than a day later, the accusations also included more recent events, including at CBS.

Of course, you DON’T know the people you see on TV or listen to on the radio. What I thought I knew about O.J. Simpson and especially Bill Cosby made their falls from grace much more difficult to comprehend.

We all discover that our heroes sometimes have feet of clay, and that’s an uncomfortable part of the learning process. It sucks, no matter at what age it happens.

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