Daddy Issues

The struggle is real.

A couple days ago, my mom texted me: “If you aren’t busy today, could you please go help Daddy?” Immediately, I knew what she was talking about.

It was Pool Opening Day at my parents’ house.

My parents have always had a pool. A BIG pool. A 40-foot x 20-foot above-ground pool. Growing up, I was the envy of my friends, who’d come over every summer to have a blast in the water while I sat on the deck watching them.

I don’t like to be wet or cold, i.e., I’m no fun.

The days we close the pool (in September) and open it (in May) are always stressful days for my father. For some reason, he gets all worked up on these days. You’d think we were building a pool, instead of just putting on or taking off the tarp.

Dad is in his eighties now, so I went up early to help him with some of the heavy lifting and keep him from doing anything stupid. He’s almost eighty-two, but he still thinks he’s thirty-two. When I arrived, he was up on the pool deck using a bucket tied to a rope to take any standing rainwater off the tarp.

“I’ve taken off thirty-five buckets so far!” he told me proudly as I walked up onto the deck. My dad is obsessed with numbers. A couple weeks ago, he boasted about picking up 1,763 pine cones from the yard.

It’s like having Rain Man for a father.

Dad was obviously winded when I got there, so I immediately took over on bucket duty. As I tossed it onto the tarp, over and over, he was constantly critiquing my method as if I were fifteen instead of fifty. Last week, I came up to help him cut the grass, and he did the same thing. It reminded me of when, as a teenager, I’d go down to my Pappap’s (his dad’s) house to mow the lawn. Pappap would always be putting the gas in himself when I arrived, then he’d start the mower for me. Then he’d stand there watching me the whole time I pushed his Lawn Boy around the yard.

It’s like they say: history repeats itself.

After I got all the water off the tarp, Dad told me to go up to the basement and get the large deck umbrella.

“I’ll come help you,” he said, slowly getting up from the deck chair he was resting on.

“I can get it,” I assured him as I took off up the hill in a sprint. “Just stay here!” But still, he followed me up to the house, breathing heavily all the way.

After I easily carried the umbrella down, it was time to move the basketball hoop into place.

“Wait for me!” Dad said as I began to slide the plastic hoop into position. Again, I could’ve easily moved it myself, since it’s made of plastic and pretty light until the base is filled with water. But Dad insisted. Then, as we went to secure the hoop to the railing with a rope, I see my dad disappear as he drops off the deck and falls into the pool. Luckily, the tarp was still on and it caught him like a safety net.

“I’m alright!” he said, as I held the hoop in place and watched him claw his way back onto the deck.

Octogenarians these days.

After that, the only other thing to do was to carry the pool filter down from the back porch. Now, I can easily carry the filter myself; it’s not that heavy. But Dad always insists on “helping” me, which, in reality, only makes the task all the more difficult. So, when he told me he had to go into the house to get something, I sprinted up to the back porch, scooped up the filter, and quickly carried it down to the pool before he was any the wiser.

“I knew you were going to do that!” he huffed when he came back out of the house.

In recent years, I’ve figured out that, whenever I go to my dad’s to help him with something, I have to be sneaky so he won’t always try to “help” me. Sometimes during the day, when I know he’s at the casino, I’ll come up to cut the grass or do some other chore, and I have to be careful to avoid his front-door Ring camera, lest he become wise of my secret mission. It’s exhausting.

Just before I left, I handed Dad his phone, which he had left on the table up on the pool deck. “Keep this in your pocket,” I scolded him as if I were his dad. “You know, in case you fall or something and need to call for help.”

Taking the phone, he just looked at me and smiled. “I already did!” ~