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Cartoons and Watermelons
By John Elous, Chicago, IL
From Dads Behaving DADLY: 67 Truths, Tears, and Triumphs of Modern Fatherhood Copyright © 2014 Motivational Press. Reprinted with permission. By Hogan Hilling and Al Watts.
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I have an acute sense of how little time I spend with my ten-year-old daughter, and I have come to the realization over the last two or three years how much of her life I am missing.
I live in Downtown Chicago and commute 45 minutes to my office in the suburbs. I leave the house well before my daughter wakes up; sometimes it feels like the middle of the night, to get a run in before work, and to beat some of the traffic. Every 15-minute delay adds 20 minutes to the commute as you get closer to “rush hour” which, for anyone who knows Chicago, starts at 6:00 a.m. and ends at 7:00 p.m.
The truth is, staying ahead (or behind the traffic in the evening) is only partially the motivator for arriving early or leaving the office late. I get there early to simply keep my head above water. I use the hour before the majority of my co-workers arrive to prepare for my usual routine of business reviews, ad hoc meetings and the steady stream of email. During the week, I struggle to leave the office by 6:30 p.m., which means I usually get home around 8:00 p.m., which is bedtime for my daughter.
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I love my work. My wife would say I have an unhealthy level of passion for it. She is extremely supportive, though, and kindly feigns interest when I feel compelled to tell her about some work-related event or business success. I really should dial it back. I know this to be true when my daughter jumps into a conversation between my wife and I and offers advice on some business deal or work dilemma.
Clearly, my daughter misses me. I miss her too. For the past several years, I have done two things on a consistent basis to help make up for our lack of time together. I may not be around when she wakes up, nor do I often get home before she goes to bed at night, but I take great pleasure in knowing she is thinking of me.
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To help remind her of me during the day, I fell in the habit of making little cartoons for her lunch box. They started out as little jokes but quickly evolved to be full-blown animations. I am no artist; in fact, the creative execution of my “Laugh out Loud Lunches” is not going to be making The New Yorker anytime soon.
Often, they are scribbled on a scrap of paper while lying in bed at night or standing at the kitchen counter drinking a cup of coffee before I leave the house in the morning. I dream these things up while sitting in traffic, or occasionally, I shamelessly copy a joke I heard or saw somewhere over the course of the day. My wife will fold them up and slip them into my daughter’s lunch bag, long after I have left for the office. When I am not traveling, I am usually good for at least one or two a week.
Apparently, my little cartoons are a hit in the school lunchroom. My daughter tells me they are passed around the lunch table for a group critique, and more times than not, the kids like them. The more esoteric cartoons are passed to the teacher for explanation and evaluation. My wife tells me she knows how well my “Laugh Out Loud Lunch” was received by my daughter and friends about five minutes into the car ride home. Strangely, getting a positive review is something I look forward to hearing. I love to think of her reading the cartoons and (hopefully) laughing and thinking about what a great guy her dad is.
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The second outlet I use to compensate for my absence is watermelon sculpture. She loves watermelon, always has. When my wife was pregnant, she craved watermelon at all hours of the day and night. I’m not sure if there is any biological evidence to support why my daughter loves it so much, but she eats it almost every day. So, when I prepare breakfast on the weekends, there is inevitably watermelon on the plate. However, I don’t just slice the melon, I sculpt! I will arrange the melon on a plate and, to great fanfare, present it to my bleary-eyed daughter. The highlight of my day is watching her face as she sees her breakfast and the figure I have carved.
As I am sitting on an airplane somewhere far away from my family, or sitting in my car during my commute to work, I often think of the look on her face in that instant. I have no idea what, if anything, she is thinking, but I like to think when she is an adult, she will look back on her childhood and remember these sculptures and drawings.
My hope is she will recognize these little gestures as a symbol of my love for her, and even if dad was gone most of the week, he tried hard to stay connected.
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John Elous is a Canadian dad to a daughter, 11, and married to his wife for 15 years. He spent most of his adult life living and working in France, Mexico, and the United States but is repatriating to Canada in 2014. This involved dad looks forward to more time for running and playing tennis with his wife, and teaching his daughter to ski.
Hogan Hilling is a nationally recognized and OPRAH approved author of 12 published books. Hilling has appeared on Oprah. He is the creator of the DADLY book series and the “#WeLoveDads” and “#WeLoveMoms” Campaigns, which he will launch in early 2018. He is also the owner of Dad Marketing, a first of its kind consultation firm on how to market to dads. He is also the founder of United We Parent. Hilling is also the author of the DADLY book series and first of its kind books. The first book is about marketing to dads “DADLY Dollar$” and two coffee table books that feature dads and moms. “DADLY Dads: Parents of the 21st Century” and “Amazing Moms: Parents of the 21st Century.” Hilling is the father of three children and lives in southern California.
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Originally published in Dads Behaving DADLY: 67 Truths, Tears, and Triumphs of Modern Fatherhood Copyright © 2014 Motivational Press. Reprinted with permission.
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