It was an outside Spring cleaning kind of day at our house today. You know. Cleaning up sticks from the yard. Trimming the rose bushes back. Putting the snowblower away and breaking out the lawn mower. Cleaning and sweeping the garage. Putting shovels on their seasonal hooks. Because my health isn't as young as it used to be, I got to be supervisor and my 2 sons were the work force. It was the first really beautiful weekend of Spring. Clear blue skies. Shining hot sun. I was a bit surprised of the effort and detail they put into doing the various tasks because I knew my boys had other things on their mind. Fifty-some years ago, I was in their shoes.
My dad would round up my 2 brothers and me on this first nice weekend of the season and make us help him do the same. He was a stickler for detail. He wanted every speck of dirt and dust cleaned from every little nook and corner. Throwing out old stuff. Minor tune-up on the mower and getting it running. Besides being a bit obsessed with organization and detail, he was also quite direct and terse. He had little patience for incompetence and imperfections and his thundering voice was the crack of his whip to get us to do better. It would take an entire afternoon for the 4 of us to clean the yard and garage. By then, it was supper time and too late to do stuff with our friends. To us boys, the first beautiful Spring day of the season was ruined.
I loved my dad and I see a lot of his finer qualities in me but when I became a dad, I swore I would not act or raise my children in such a way that they would fear me. I also said I would not be as strict and would not rob them of their free time.
The job got done. Only 2 hours. Not done perfectly, but done. And my boys still had time to get outside and enjoy the nice weather with their friends.
My mind started to wander. While my blog is about memories, I stopped myself short before getting carried away with my philosophies and opinions on raising children. I'm still learning.
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