Being a Dad
I always knew I wanted to be a dad. Probably because I had such a great father and wanted to be like him. I would literally pray as a kid, and even as a teen, for Jesus to delay his return until I was twenty-five years old because I figured by then I would be married and have a kid. And indeed I was, and did.
Terri and I married on August 1, 1987, and thirteen months later I welcomed my little girl into the world. I was able to be in the room when she was born and it was love at first sight. I purchased boxes of pink bubble gum cigars to give out to family, friends, and to everyone at work. I wanted everyone to know my daughter had arrived.
In the weeks leading up to the birth, Terri and I spent time decorating the baby room. We didn't know for sure whether the child would be a boy or girl, there were no big gender reveal parties in those days, but we had a feeling we were having a daughter. Terri liked the name Chanda for a girl, and we chose Rachelle in honor of my grandmother, Rachel. For some reason, "Chanda Bear" seemed to be fitting. I found two graphic images of a bear holding balloons and traced the outline onto transparency for use with an overhead projector. I painted the bear and balloons picture on the seat of a restored chair from Terri's grandmother, AND on the two Venetian blinds over the windows. The curtains and baby bed coverings were matched and ready to go.
Chanda Rachelle Alexis was so tiny. She would sleep during the day so she would be well rested for the nightly cry. Even though I worked, I took my turn getting up and rocking her. It was like holding a five pound sack of flour, so small that a head on the shoulder meant her little diapered tushy was barely below my collarbone. But the only one I ended up rocking to sleep would be me. I would doze off, and some time later wake to see Chanda satisfied to be looking around from her perch on my shoulder.
Those moments in the rocking chair gave opportunity to write Chanda her very own lullaby, "Sleepy Eyed Little Baby." I would pat the rhythm on her little diaper as I sang, "Sleepy eyed little baaaaaaby. You are the cutest thing in sight. Sleepy eyed little baaaaaby, won't you go to sleep tonight. Dream sweet dreams about sweet things; let peaceful thoughts fill your mind. You need your rest, 'cause your the best, and Jesus lives inside." I would alternate her very own song with the Alexis family traditional, "By yo baby, by yo baby by yo. by yo baby, by yo baby by...."
Chanda had a notable tune-up to her cry when she was really upset. She would start at a low pitch around 440 Hertz and ramp up to about 1500 Hertz, about a 1 second pause and then hit about 6000 Hertz with a double crescendo. If only we had a recording of it. And when she woke up, she would wake up one eye at a time, as if to reason, "I don't want to rush into this waking up thing. I better test it out before I commit with both eyes." It was so funny, Terri and I nicknamed her, "Ole one eye."
She also learned to climb at an early age. During one night we heard her crying, so we went to her room, which was adjacent to ours, and she was not in her crib. We followed the sound of her cry and discovered her under our bed. The sides of the Jenny Craig baby bed were no match for her.
Jamin was completely different. Likely because of the lengthy hospital stay at birth, Jamin mostly slept all night. It took him a while to develop a strong cry, in the beginning being a very breathy cry. He had that lower lip quiver down, though. And his mouth would form a perfect square when he cried, earning him the nickname "square lips."
Wanting each of my kids to have their own lullaby, I penned "Baby Bumpkin" for Jamin. I'm not sure I know what a bumpkin is, but it worked well in the song: "Baby bumpkin your so sweet, from your head down to your feet. Jesus made you special, see, 'cause he's given you to me. Sleep baby, sleep baby, Jesus watches over you. Sleep baby, sleep baby, rest will make you feel brand new."
I loved wrestling with my kids. I would get in the floor and we would roll around and they would try to "get" me. Sometimes I would play hurt and Jamin would fall for it every time, coming close to check on me. Chanda, the older, wiser, sister, would be warning, "Don't! It's a trap!" Jamin would get close and I would grab him and pin him under me for merciless tickles. My day job was taxing and when I got home I would need a moment to shift gears. Often I would just lay face down in the living room carpeted floor for a "nap" while Chanda and Jamin would walk up and down my back and legs. It was like a daily massage, but they thought it was play time with daddy.
I loved staging video shoots with them. I would dress them up for music videos or short plays. I even cast them in a couple of my silly amateur mini-movies my brother and I made in the series The Silent Teddy. The fun you can have with a VHS camcorder.
We tried to instill in both of them from very young a knowledge and appreciation for God. We would read Bible stories and let them have turns telling us their understanding of who Jesus is. At one point they were both involved in Junior Bible Quiz competitions and would both quiz out at every meet, meaning they would correctly answer the maximum number of questions they were allowed to answer. I was always so proud of them. As a devoted Christian father, I took seriously the responsibility God had given to me in these two precious gifts.
When Chanda was as young as a toddler, I would pull her into my lap and tell her, "One day you are going to grow up and get married. Promise me, on your wedding day you will sit in my lap one last time as my little girl." She would always promise.
Movie nights were fun. We would go to the video story and rent the latest animated flick on VHS and bring it home, sometimes multiple movies. Then we would gather in the kitchen to make "whop biscuit" donuts, which meant taking a tube of canned biscuits, cutting out the center with a coke bottle lid, and frying them in a skillet of grease until they were golden brown. We would have the donuts, and the center we cut out would make an equal amount of donut holes. We would take powered sugar and milk to make a glaze, putting a dash of vanilla in one batch and Hershey's chocolate in the other so we would have a selection of glazed pastries. We would take the plate stacked high with donuts to the living room coffee table and settle in for the movie marathon. While they were little we had a couch and a rocking chair, no recliner for dad. I would usually side sideways on the couch with my legs curled beside me and the kids would fight over who gets to sit in the "hole." The hole was the curl of my legs behind my bent knees. That seemed to be a favorite plays to be. I guess it was comfortable.
It was always fun helping them with new things. Our street wasn't super busy, so we had a great runway for learning to ride bicycles. Once I was running beside Chanda and she was doing so good. We made the round at the school which was at the end of our street and she started veering my direction, squeezing me off the road until I tripped over the curb and tore my stone washed jeans. A small price to pay to help my daughter achieve wheeled mobility.
One summer, while both of them were at kids camp I decided to build them a tree house in the big pecan tree at the corner of the back yard. It wasn't big or elaborate, just a solid landing about ten feet up. Under the tree was a sandbox and an elevated playhouse, so together it made quite the complex. When they arrived home from camp they were excited to have the new play area and spent much time in that elevated dwelling.
The years I was traveling with the band I feel may have been hard on my kids, with me being gone a lot. But they did get to come to a lot of the shows that were close. Jamin even traveled on the bus with us some. When I took my turn at the wheel, often the middle of the night, Jamin would get up with me and sit in the "jump seat" where we would talk and cut up as the miles clicked by. It was his job to keep me awake. When it came time for the band to end I thought the kids would be excited to have their dad home all the time, but they took it with shock. It seemed they had wrapped part of their identity around dad being in a Christian rock band and I didn't realize what the change would do to them as well.
During those years, we were playing at a skating rink, of all places, and it also happened to be Chanda's birthday. We combined the two events and had a birthday party at the skating rink with a live band. I grew up with a love of skating and spent hours most weeks cutting a wheel with my friends. I wasn't half bad. So I asked Chanda for a daddy-daughter skate. I skated backwards as we held hands and skated for several songs, talking and savoring the moment.
Jamin became interested in skateboarding at a young age. At one point he found a real entrepreneurial streak and wanted to start his own skateboard company. I happily invested in his venture helping him buy his first set of t-shirts and skateboard decks to sell. Starboard Skate never rivaled Tony Hawk, but it was a joy to help one of my kids learn about enterprise. One day we received a call from Jamin, "Dad, I think I broke my arm." He was so calm it didn't sound like much of an emergency. On my way to the Bodenheimer Skate Park I prayed it would only be sprained, not broken. As I pulled into the parking lot Jamin was walking out to meet me with his skateboard in one hand and the other arm he was holding out away from his body. I noticed an extra elbow about four or five inches above his wrist bent at about thirty degrees. Yep, it was broke.
Teaching your kid to drive, now there's a fun time. We spent many hours at the large church parking lot going round and round before the wild adventure of street driving. When you've driven for decades, you take for granted all the things you actually do when you drive. Simultaneously you are pressing the gas while prepared to brake, watching the instrument panel to maintain proper speed, which you ascertain by reading the speed limit signs, which you notice while reading all street signs, watching the lanes to stay within their bounds, keeping an eye on approaching traffic and vehicles that may be entering from a side street, not to mention pedestrians and looking up to not miss a red light. At one point Chanda exclaimed, "There's just too much!" I thought she was going to quit, but she persisted and eventually won her driver's license.
When it came time to buy Chanda her first car, we weren't about to buy a new driver and brand new car. I went to a local car lot and paid a thousand dollars cash for a red Hyundai Elantra. She looked right smart in the little car and I didn't have to worry about those scrapes and mishaps with posts and curbs because it wasn't a large investment. When she graduated and headed to college, though, we did get her something a little more reliable for the big leagues.
The Ford Mustang was Jamin's car of choice and I wanted to do my best to make his dream come true. I had double the budget this time, two thousand for a cash clunker. We hit all the car lots in all near by towns looking for a $2000 mustang. Jamin was only picky about one detail, that it not be white or purple. We finally found a 1997 Mustang in Magnolia, Arkansas that seemed to be in pretty good shape for our price. It was white with purple racing stripes, but he didn't care. It was perfect.
Our church received donation of a boat and trailer with the thought the church could sell it for some missions money. Thing was, the boat was in bad shape and no one wanted it. We couldn't sell it or even give it away. After about a year we were desperate to get it off of the church property. One day I thought, I've never had a boat. I called Jamin and asked if he would be interested in us fixing up the boat. He agreed it would be a great father-son project. That's all I needed to hear. I arranged to purchase the boat for a dollar and hauled it to the back yard. It was a 1985 Cobia Cuddy Cruiser, nineteen feet with a cabin and a 140 HP Mercury inboard/outboard motor. Though the paint was not good, the hull was solid. The floor was rotted, the upholstery was tattered and the engine bilge was full of dirt with tiny oak trees growing out of it. The first order of business was to see of the engine would turn over. The control panel was toast, so with a battery jump I hot wired the starter and we were excited to hear the engine try to start. It was not frozen, so the project had promise. We started with massive clean up and over the next few months cleaned the engine, gave it a new paint job (black on bottom, then a field of red and white on top,) then replaced the floor with new marine grade plywood, covering it with fiberglass and gray boat carpet. Then we learned our way through vinyl covering for the side panels and engine cover. We bought new seats and captain's chair and it was starting to look great. Lastly I built a new instrument panel, replaced the steering wheel and we topped it off with a shiny air horn. The project was a memorable experience for both of us. We spent the next three years taking it to lakes and rivers, but after that it sat unused. Seems we weren't boat people after all. The fun was the building, learning, laughing, spending time together.
Chanda landed her first job at Good Times Grill. I was so proud of her entering the workforce and learning to work a job that wasn't fun around difficult people and making the most of it. When she came home from her shift and walked into the back door we could smell the fry grease two rooms over. It was the smell of, "Our little girl is growing up."
Jamin's first job was at an auto parts store. I don't even remember how that came about as he had not experience with cars. Even times I changed oil, replaced starters or alternators, or did my own brake jobs, Jamin would not be interested in sticking around. Working at Advanced Auto taught him a lot about cars and he gained much knowledge about vehicles, working with others, the public and life. It made me proud to see him shine with outstanding work ethic.
Around the time Chanda went to college we had been watching the TV series Stargate. In this show, the bad guys were the alien race of the Goa'uld. They had their own language in the show. Chanda and I discovered a key online to interpret their language. When she went to college we would send messages back and forth in Goa'uld. It was a lot of work writing what you want to say, then translating word by word in to the fictitious language and the on the other end having to match word by word with the key to interpret the message. It was a fun exercise unique to us.
My kids and I have journeyed through many adventures and the memory clips play in my head. The trips we took as a family, recorded in another chapter of this book. Navigating home school, high school and college. Boyfriend and girlfriend adventures. Discipline moments. Planting flower beds together. Building flower boxes with Chanda, restoring an old boat with Jamin. Preparing Chanda for six mission trips, the four to Africa being the most difficult to let her go to because I wouldn't be there to protect her. Going to get Jamin from the skate park when he broke his arm, and him walking out to the car with his skateboard in one hand and the other arm looking like a paper clip. Chanda's first job, coming home from Good Times Grill every evening and you could smell the fry grease when she walked in the door. Jamin's insistence on not eating his vegetables. Chanda entering ministry. Jamin learning to play guitar and stepping up to lead worship for a young adult ministry.
On Chanda's wedding day, we were bustling around making everything perfect for this October outdoor wedding. The seats were in order, the mason jar candles hung. The reception area was prepared and everyone was in their finest attire. I received a message that Chanda needed me for something. I went into the home and was led to a place where Chanda was standing beside a chair. She asked me to have a seat and she fulfilled her promise of sitting in my lap as my little girl one last time. I have the photo hanging in my office to this day.
When you reflect back, you can't help but wonder if you did enough to prepare them for the world. You question every decision with the helplessness of not being able to take it back. All you can do is pray it forward. It is much more difficult to be a dad to grown children. I see things, yet have to respect their adulthood. As much as I would love to jump in and make everything better, I can only go where invited. But I'm ready at a moment's notice.
Being a dad isn't always easy. Maybe it is never easy. Chanda and Jamin made dadding a pleasure and I love my relationship with each of them.