It’s taken me 5 years to find the motivation to redo the mudroom.  Wood paneling ala 1960’s, green AstroTurf carpet, sagging cardboard stock ceiling, grimy ceiling fan – no mas!  Last year I replaced the ancient non insulated sliding doors with a nice find in Craigslist for a sweet set of sliders that matched our house windows and cost me 1/5 the price of new ones.  Last month we laid tile, finally ditching the green Astroturf.  This was the last go around so I pulled on Mi Tierra t-shirt in order to channel heavenly San Antonio food and the spirit of the great general of the armies of the south. I convinced my father that we were going to do a couple of small projects and mostly grill seafood, made the Home Depot buy list (useless, since we made endless trips back and forth for more stuff – DIY projects always demand more stuff, like a bottomless stomach, they keep devouring, endlessly, or until you scream – ya!, and call it a day at 90% done, which I’ll add, is 10% better than good enough for government work).  Only an idiot does home improvement projects in deadly heat and humidity, and that idiot was I, at one point laying curled up in a ball between joists, almost crashing through the ceiling as my stomach violently cramped up from dehydration after spending a few hours trying to clean out an accumulation of 40 years of dust, mice shit, nasty sticky itchy insulation, then rerouting ancient electrical wires (hmmm, did I hit the breaker?) finally creeping down the ladder, soaked through completely in sweat.  My father is old school, everything can be mastered and done 100% if done patiently, thoughtfully, while I’m the 90% solution son. Our comfort zones didn’t match up, but we each took and gave, el veijo learning maybe one or two things, like compound miter cuts for crown molding, and el hijo realizing that at this point in my life, this father-son project was about more than home improvement.  Silence runs deep in the Farias men, and for a time, in between nearly nailing my finger to the wall, inhaling potentially asbestos ridden paneling, arguing over the finer points of leveling and plum techniques, we did share words that touched deep, never really pushing their way out in complete sentences, or engaged conversations, but through head nods, humphs, and a little bit of laughter to ease the uneasy empathy required, we did talk, and at the end, we managed to bring the mudroom into the 21 century, the garage door replaced with an insulated one (Craigslist strikes again! 1/8 the price of new one), the basement window casements finished, and a couple of DD Coolattas downed. El veijo is getting on in years, but I’ve got a couple of small projects in the wings, and a grill I’ll fire up this go around. Next time I’ll show him pictures of the hamaca I’ll be putting up in prep for some lazy winter swinging as the New England temperature plummets.  Bathrooms are next, already 80% done, and as the Farias saying goes – eso es pan comido!

Once more, coming upon a significant life choice, I’m reminded of Borges’ The Garden of Forking Paths, as I vainly attempt to peer ahead around the bend of each, trying to ascertain which one to take, as a mocking voice inside laughs and tells me que estoy chingado whichever path I take.  Success for me has meant paving the road from one opportunity to another, having lost mentors that allowed me to dream the impossible, relying more and more on a weak, tired, and defeatist sense of what life has to offer – trading dreams for safety, and fooling myself by calling it practical, shamelessly thinking it wisdom.  Once upon a time  grit and gut forged the path.  Now, exhausted by the journey, I’ve pawned away a gift and settled into mediocrity, allowing the road to dictate choices.  44 years gone by, perhaps a good 20 to go if I cleanse body and purge the bad mojo attached to spirit that allowed me to wander into the foggy land of relativeness for so long.  Strip down, simplify, and take a compass heading for true North. My ancestors did it forever years ago.  Time to touch their faces and hunt again.

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Father’s Day seems to sneak up on me.  Perhaps because of late, my father, having retired, is off in the sticks of Ecuador attempting to construct a parallel life, retrace a fork in Borges’ garden labyrinth before the path he chose 40 years ago brought him north with dreams of El Dorado and a family in tow.

So when my daughter snuck into the bedroom to wake my wife, the two having conspired to make me breakfast in bed, I momentarily felt a sense of anxiety as to my role as father (lay in bed and wait for the parade of breakfast entrées and kisses) and son (track down my father somewhere in the hinterlands of the south to wish him a good day).

As a son, good wishes and an unspoken sense of forgiveness is all I can offer, having accumulated enough years to know better than to judge, and too old to give in to the pull to get him a bottle of Old Spice, his closet, I’m sure is full of an endless supply accumulated over my childhood years, when Zachery’s Drugstore was owned by a man named Mr. Zachery, and places like CVS and Walgreens did not yet exist.

Real eggs (not the eggs whites I force myself to like on hot breakfast mornings), multigrain toast (because white bread it evil – and full of corn), strawberries, and the perfect café con leche landed on my lap, capped by my daughter’s eyes full of pride as I howled down the feast.  A card from her with a poem all her own about dada now made it my turn to beam with pride at this 9 yr old wonder.  My wife, sensing the overload of red in my tie collection wisely got me a funky blue tie and a very cool Orvis fly box.

According to Lina, May 23^rd is Intergalactic Kid’s Day (“dada, kids don’t have a day of their own,” she let me know back in May), which requires a list of FUN things to do that kids must write up and parents MUST follow, so she insisted I write up my own list of things to do for Father’s Day.

Sleeping in was not allowed.  Still recovering from a day of kayaking out by the mouth of the Connecticut River, riding the current in a Native Watercraft Ultimate 14.5, I tried to think of low impact things to do, and really, fun things to do since Lina would be passing judgment over the list.  Home Depot was certainly out of the question.

I let her jump start the list, and at the end I couldn’t tell who listed what, with the following: go see Marmaduke, have pizza for lunch, bbq kabobs & corn for dinner.  Also making the list; launching a newly assembled Estes rocket – a childhood obsession of mine that seems to have rubbed off on my little Sith. Bike riding fell off as did the silent whispers of

Diary Queen that Lina vainly tried, using Karate Kid mind control tricks on me. I did manage to catch a nap and finish James Dodson’s Faithful Travelers, which left me saddened by Dodson’s fate, but refocused my own mental energy as father, husband, and son. In the end I called my father, dialing a foreign cell number but finding him on the other end, washing an SUV that I told him needed the dirt in order to keep from falling apart.  The Farias men approach the X-axis of emotional truth, but never quite reach it.  It’s a strange calculus that I work hard to keep from happening with my wife and daughter.  With every turn, another forking path in the garden appears, bringing us closer to infinity.

I’ve put the backyard homestead dream aside for the moment.  Minor setbacks like missing the deadline to buy bees placed beehive project on hold.  Egg laying chickens were nixed by the wife (“what will the neighbors say?!” she said.  “Can I borrow some eggs” wasn’t the answer she was thinking). African pygmy goats suffered a similar veto.

Took down lumber surrounding the vegetable garden when I found out that treated wood leeches who-knows-what carcinogens into the lovely tomatoes.  This year, through pure neglect the tomatoes are growing on their own.  I’m not sure what Shelby is doing over by the garden, but I’ve been sniffing around to see if he’s fertilizing when I’m not looking.  I think naming him Shelby is causing the poor lad to suffer from a bit of doggy gender confusion.  I honestly can’t remember why we named him Shelby. He’s a good dog, addicted to bagels, a bit hyper, but what lab isn’t hyper for the first 10 years.  Promised I’d take him swimming but summer just isn’t sticking this season in New England.  Feels like fall around here with all the rain and cool evenings.

Sold what the wife called my “Sanford & Son truck” yesterday to a kid that will polish it up and more than likely never put any manure in the back (I know, I hear ya Fred).  That pretty much seals it that I’m not going duck hunting in the fall – not in my new Yuppie Outback, waiting to be clowned by the spit-before-you-talk crowd. Haven’t given up on the trout though. Came back from a trip to Virginia and though I didn’t get a chance to cast some line up in Pembroke waters, it is beautiful country, with a generous people. Bought a nice March Brown travel rod and as soon as I marry it up to one of the dozen reels I’m following on eBay, I’ll be ready for a trip out west.  Still eyeballing a used Bass Tracker…decisions, decisions…in the mean time, a stack of summer reading is piling up and there is the deck that needs to be sealed…mañana

The rains in Connecticut finally gave way to a weekend of sunshine, and of course, that can only mean one thing – crawl out of bed with the rising sun, gurgle down a glass of OJ, contemplate whether to take the dog or not, and finally sneak out the door with my 9yr old in tow in search of a stream.  To her credit, Lina has never given me the evil eye when I wake her from a deep sleep with a gentle tug and whisper “you up for some fishing?”  We’ve both been itching to get wet, shore side casting just not doing it for us this season and the “what boat honey, I’m not looking to buy a boat?” fishing boat not yet in the driveway.

I took a mental health day last week and finally got the nerve up to do some fishing in a clandestine part of Latimer Brook right off I95 that’s been an itch for the past 5 years.  By right off I95, I mean throw the wheel a hard right and off into the wood line, ignore the ‘no parking anytime’ sign because it doesn’t really apply to me since I’m fishing, not parking, and slip into a pair of neoprene waders (now I know what my hot dogs feel like) while morning rush hour traffic buzzes by, some latte snorting workers looking over with strange looks, while one gave me the knowing nod.

What I found after technically not going over any fencing since all the fencing has over the years been pushed down by other fisherman, is the soothing sound of rushing water and the most amazing stream I’ve seen in some time.  Enclosed by a cathedral of trees, orchestrated by the randomness of mother boulders placed there some time around the last ice age, and filtering God light, I find myself smiling from ear to ear.  “Wow,” escapes my mouth as I scurry down the embankment, look left and right and don’t see a soul.  After having fished the overcrowded Farmington last season, this is an amazing sight of solitude and soon the rushing buzz of I95 vanishes and all I hear is the sound of water and feel the crispness of the air.

My enthusiasm got the best of me and I did the equivalent of shouting in a library, caring little as I waded up to my waist and cast about like a kid in a toy store trying to reach for everything all at once.  All this time, the brookies lay six feet away refusing to pay any mind to my flies, letting me know the gig was up.  I did manage to land one about six inches long, and a little brookie that really had some fight in him.  As noon approached a couple of DEP men came into sight downstream, heaving buckets full of fish they were seeding along the edges of the stream.  I waved at one and he ignored me, which I took to be a sign that he didn’t really want to see me and that I’d better call it a day.

Then this weekend, Lina, in her Oaki gear, got a taste of wading up near Falls River, around a bend that had all the teachable wading points in one spot, included safety lesson on wading – “dada, it looks like you’re getting too deep,” she yells over as I inch forward trying to untangle my fly from an overhanging branch I got too close to, the water already up to my chest, inches from flooding in.  Now who is teaching who?  We didn’t catch anything, but Lina got a chance show her casting skills to two little girls who rode up on kick scooters, I’m sure their first encounter with a girl casting a fly in the middle of a river.  We cut our wet time short, as I couldn’t get a good read on what was hatching and the fish seemed to be picky about breakfast.  A little league game was about to begin at the adjacent field; the noise of SUVs and hordes of kids and parents broke the magic that is the passing of water all around us.  Three dads stood off to the side of the river, their mouths wide open the way I’ve found myself in the past watching other men casting flies.  I waved and they asked how the fishing was, which, while I gave polite responses to, finally deadened my ear to the water all about me and the fish that surely would rise if only the noise could be stilled.

We took a family vacation recently, heading north to the misty coast of northern Maine.  The water was too cold to even consider going ankle deep, but we did throw our shoes off the second we hit the sands and after a long cold winter, even the cool waters and windy seascape felt inviting.

I found myself picking up smooth oblong rocks that were probably there since time immemorial, washed up and swallowed back by the Atlantic over the millenniums, and skipping them across the waters like my brothers and I would do when we were kids.  Lina ran over to join me, frustrated that her attempts ended up plopping and not skipping.  When she was three and we lived off the Hudson River in NY, as a stay-at-home dad I would take her down to the park by the water and at some point, after tumbling around the jungle gym, kicking the soccer ball all around, and fruitlessly trying to sneak up on the geese, we would end up on the sand tossing rocks into the passing current.  She doesn’t remember much of those days, whereas for me, they’re written in indelible ink on my heart.  It’s always been a love story between my daughter and I, one I keep trying to selfishly slow down as I see her springing forward toward a future that for her is filled with wonder.  This go around I taught her more nuances about how to select the perfect rock – oblong and just long enough to cradle between index finger and thumb, body position, and the slider delivery, and above all, patience child, patience, that with practice and a sense of calm the rock will bounce across the waters.  We ended up with a tied score, each having thrown at least two rocks that skipped at least five times across the incoming surf waters – though I sure tried my best to beat her as I always have, attempting to teach her that there are no freebies (which she can attest to in past Jedi v. Sith lightsaber battles where she walks away bruised but determined to take her father out next time).

On the way home I watched her catching the wind from the open window in the rear of the Outback, a smile and sense of wonder in her eyes as the pine scented landscape whizzed by.  I learn an incredible amount about life from this little creature of 9, though she incessantly reminds me now that “dada, I’m almost double digits you know.”  Someday, when she’s all grown up and the only responsibilities I have left are to catch fish and not soil myself, I’ll have to remember to dig up these days of wonder and thank her for the gift she has been, something I will take with me into eternity.

By Louann Brizendine, Special to CNN

(CNN) — Although women the world over have been doing it for centuries, we can’t really blame a guy for being a guy. And this is especially true now that we know that the male and female brains have some profound differences…(do you really want to read more???)

I sense the same alluring circular logic of fundamentalism that for years trapped me on a highway to hell in this article, only rather than my soul, in this instance they’ve mapped out the predestined course of my body (and marriage, fatherhood, even abuelo-ness).   Will researchers soon come out with an anti-ManTrance serum? Something about relieving us of human agency, and therefore responsibility for our actions and inactions just doesn’t cut it.  It’s my own fault for clicking through and reading, so spring resolution is click less, fish and bbq more (if you already clicked through, sorry, you should have read the post first, but then again, your ‘click sensational link’ gene would have overpowered you).  Picked up a used Yak on Craigslist, smaller and lighter to give my little Sith room to grow and maneuver on her own. Does she look up to the challenge?

I thought I was doing well avoiding cabin fever this winter, until I looked out my window and noticed my hamaca covered in snow.  Spring’s almost here,  which means it’s time to restock on Parachute Adams #16 and load the fly rod for some backyard casting off the deck to loosen up the elbow.  Of course reclaiming the deck from winter means nothing less than pulling out the grill for a test fire. I can almost smell the sweet mix of mesquite wood on the grill and  the blistering hot sausages y platanos grilling, Sunday afternoons swinging como un vago on the old fisherman’s net turned hammock, con un fria. Only 19 days to go…

There are spots of time, where, if you remain still, you can peer back and forward for just a brief moment and realize that everything is going to work out just fine. This morning I woke to my 44th year on this planet and while not even coming close to a mild grade mid-life crisis (didn’t happen at 40 either), I felt like something important was waiting for me. Lina, little Sith that she is, jumped me as I lay slumming in bed, having, like every year, ritually taken the day off from work. If I must work for the machine, at least on this one day let there be no emails, no meetings, no inconsequential drama – that effluence of muck that slowly drains the life force of you until one day you find yourself about to take the ferry over to the other side having made no impact in the creation of a more compassionate world.

A week ago, my daughter informed me ’she just can’t call me “Dad” because it just doesn’t sound right, and therefore will continue calling me “Daddy” if that’s OK with me.’ Hmmm, no complaints from me, as I nonchalantly nodded in agreement, though deep inside I sensed that same rush of life energy that many a time has taken me down this path of fatherhood –though always in my mind I’m on the verge of screwing things up – repeatedly letting me know that the path is true, that the bonds will hold, that I may yet be worthy of being her loving father. She gave me a card she crafted, imperfect and impossible to put a price tag on (like the feeling the early Visa ‘priceless’ commercials sometimes gave you, until you realized they were pulling on your heartstrings as they lured you into their usury shackles), sang a unique birthday jingle that made me laugh and ask for continual repeats, and handed me a story.

My daughter handed me a story and as I read it time slowed to a trickle. Since she was a infant I’ve read her stories, endless stories, and at some point around 5 yrs of age I began to make up stories for her at bedtime, off the cuff tales of adventure centered on a family living on the edge of the world, on a beach a continent away, in a land full of magic and dreams. Night after night I would tell her these stories, the main protagonists being a little girl and her daddy, with mama in the background, always patiently waiting for them to return from a search for dragons, talking condors, unspeakably large butterflies, and treasures beyond compare, all inhabiting a moral and virtuous world that came alive with every sentence. Like Scheherazade, I would end the stories with a hint of what the next days adventure would bring, always causing a plead from my daughter, and of course leaving me to mentally manage an array of characters and scenarios so as to not repeat them. I don’t tell these as often now that she devours books at an unbelievable rate – Harry Potter long ago paged through and currently thumbing through the Inheritance Trilogy. But every now and then she’ll ask if I can tell her one, and those are the moments I drop whatever I’m doing and slip back into the magic.

This morning she left me mouth wide open as she delivered her own take on the little girl series, slowed time enough for me to understand that she grows more powerful each day, more independent, more capable of buttressing against the pain the world will attempt to leave at her feet. I’ll always be her daddy, long after I cross the final waters, and that’s enough to calm my restless soul.

Now that Callan Chythlook-Sifsof has broken the barbie doll barrier, it’s time to get Lina a real board. In the Northern Kingdom, we train girls to fly!