About once a year the Lucky clan loads up into the Durango and heads cross-country to Austin, where the wife’s family lives.  Usually in the past couple of years I haven’t gone, primarily because I am trying to conserve leave in order to take other vacations.  With the baby on board though, this time it was out of necessity—we just don’t all fit into the Durango with our luggage.

In the past, as I did this year, I always looked forward to this week of being a bachelor.  This year there was a glitch—the day before the trip the thermostat crumped, resulting in my all-so-stellar expertise in car mechanics (none) swooping in to save the day whilst taking a bath in antifreeze.  But after testing it out and raising my fists in “Father Conquers the Machine” glory, I packed them up and shipped them off.  The day that they head out of town tends to be sheer bliss--don’t shave on the weekend, spent vast amounts of time in the garage working on the Harley, cracking as many beers as I can since I don’t have Tae Kwon Do clases, Girl Scouts, soccer, CCD, or anything else really that I need to attend to.

After the weekend, however, things have changed.  The week of “man-time” doesn’t hold that glory anymore.  Maybe I’m getting old, maybe my interests have changed.  The end result is that the dog and I are getting pretty lonely.  I pulled up next to a car yesterday on my motorcycle—chrome gleaming and pipes rumbling—and looked in the back seat at a girl who was about two.  She smiled and waved and I waved back.  At that moment I missed my kids so much that my heart hurt.  My older boy called the other day and was crying on the phone because he missed me—so apparently it’s working the other way too.  I feel like we have officially become a “unit,” to use a cliché.  To me a family unit is not simply numbers, like a definition of a husband, wife, and 2.5 kids.  A family is not a unit just by being a family.  It becomes a unit when it becomes one, like parts of a body.  When separated the unit suffers as a whole, and the only cure to that unit is to bring them back together again.

Phase Two of the vacation will happen after they get back from Texas.  I have training to go to in St. Louis, which coincidentally is where my parents live.  On a wild hair I thought it would be fun to bring the monkies with me (sans infant) and let the grandparents have five days of alone time.  After my training the wife will fly up with the baby and we’ll spend another week or so with them.  I can already feel the issues that this is going to bring.  The kids have never been away from both parents simultaneously.  Thinking back to the unit theory I had this week, I’m wondering if it is such a good idea after all.  You would imagine that we’ve gotten better at this since I’m in the Air Force and am gone quite a bit, but I think it actually gets harder.  I rue the day that these parts of the family unit will go away for good to college or their adult lives.  There is literally a physical pain that goes along with the separation now.

I don’t think I would have it any other way.

I decided to become a homeroom dad for my son’s class this year.  I figured it would be a good way to get to know the parents in his class and to be involved in his school.  You guys know what I’m talking about?

One of the duties of the homeroom dads is to put together the Mother’s Day breakfast for all of the moms.  Each pair of homeroom dads is expected to coordinate with the teacher and serve breakfast to the mothers of the children in that class.  The breakfast is held in the school’s cafeteria and each class is assigned six picnic tables.  The picnic tables are set up in three rows of six- one row per class.  That’s it.  The poor homeroom dads are left to deal with the rest of the breakfast by themselves!

Well, as the day drew near, I began to get a little nervous.  After all, you will have 30 mothers, one teacher and two teacher’s aids scrutinizing what you will do.  Your poor wife will need to suffer the scorn of the others if you don’t live up to expectations!  This type of pressure wasn’t what I signed up for!

Fortunately, my wife, obviously sensing my anxiety, offered to go purchase the essentials- juice, coffee, bagels, etc.  She asked what else the other homeroom dad and I had decided to buy for the event.  The blank expression on my face quickly told her that we had only thought of juice, coffee and bagels.  “Don’t you think cups, plates and napkins would be a nice thing to have?” she said trying to hide her frustration.  Long story short, she went out and purchased everything we needed including color-coordinated plates, napkins, cups, tablecloth, etc.

It wasn’t long before the day was upon me and I found myself in the empty cafeteria staring at the row of picnic tables that was assigned to my class.  The moms were all in the various classrooms being serenaded by the children.  My fellow homeroom dads and I had exactly 30 minutes to turn these picnic tables into something we wouldn’t regret later.  I quickly began to dress my tables with the pastel-colored tablecloths and setting up the food on the far table.  Just then, the other dad assigned to my class showed up with flowers to hand out to each of the mothers in our class.  Score! Flowers!  “How did you think of that?” I asked him, my anxiety dropping considerably.  “My wife told me to buy them” he replied honestly. 

As we worked, the two homeroom dads who were assigned to the tables to my left ran into the room carrying their provisions - dark maroon tablecloths, two containers of coffee, a bag of bagels and some fruit salad.  They stopped dead in their tracks as they spied our springy colors and expansive food offerings.  I smiled.  “Look at these poor guys”, I thought to myself.  They began to sweat profusely when one of the 8th grade girls who happened by told them that those maroon tablecloths weren’t “springy”.

My mood quickly changed when the cafeteria door swung open to reveal an army of women marching in to set up the tables to my right.  It was amazing! Some carried centerpieces made of flowers, others the silverware and lace tablecloths, still more carried ... the personalized cupcakes!  Oh no! It was the homeroom moms for that class!  Apparently, those homeroom dads had come up with the ingenious plan of being away on business that week and had left it to the homeroom moms to put the breakfast together.

In the end, the event turned out OK.  Although we were overshadowed by the spring garden-like tables on our right, we weren’t as bad as the poor guys on our left who had to borrow the cafeteria’s white paper tablecloths, cups and plates.  I certainly have to thank my and my fellow homeroom dad’s wife for understanding that their help was needed in this situation and for stepping up to the plate.  I’m not sure that I’ll volunteer for homeroom dad next year, but I got the name of the bakery that made those cupcakes, just in case.