Last year I found myself camping on Fathers Day. The opportunity for the trip arose as a chance to join my brother-in-law and his family on a camping trip that coincidentally fell on Fathers Day weekend. My wife was unsure as to whether I would be open to the idea or not when she raised it a few months earlier. But I loved the thought of doing so, and in so many ways, having the chance to share with my kids an experience I shared with my own father sounded fitting and fulfilling for that weekend.
Admittedly, it was not a full blown purist camping experience. We stayed at Pinecrest Resort, in cabins of sorts, with reasonable comforts, and a minute or two walk from the true campsites adjacent to us on this large park, where tents, campfires, family members and smores were all within reach. As well as everything from bike rentals to an open-air amphitheater where at night they play "Movies under the Stars". And where we went as a family that night to see Toy Story 3, on opening night.
I have fond memories of camping, including going to ranger-hosted campfires, cooking hot-dogs, singing songs, roasting marshmallows, and wearily returning to our campsite at the end of the night. And although it was s a big leap from attending a ranger lead sing-a-long to watching a Pixar film, the experiencing of sitting with my children, chatting with my daughter and having my son sit on my lap to stay warm, well, it was something that can and should be treasured as one of the rare and precious, as well as fleeting, moments that make up the reflections and memories that will be stored away until I am in a position of reflecting back on all the years gone by and all the moments that mattered. Be it the day they leave home or between my final breaths, those will be the clips that pass in rapid sequence before my eyes. As did Andy in the movie we watched, by the time I was about 7 or 8 years old myself, I had amassed a large collection of toys, and I had reached a point of having outgrown many of them, or at least believing I should. I did not want to be associated with baby and child toys. In an effort to show my maturity I said I was done with them and did not want them anymore. My father suggested we take those I no longer played with to a Salvation Army bin where we could pass them along to younger kids who would still have the interest in them that I had lost. As I gathered them up, reservation and doubt started to swell in my gut, but I pushed it down and continued to gather the toys including some I was sincerely not ready to part with, including a stuffed blue bear I had for as long as I could remember.
I was a big boy. I was too old for kids toys. Especially a stuffed blue bear.
We drove to a nearby shopping center, where a large blue metal bin stood placed against the cinder block side wall of a department store building. it was a large rectangular container with a mail-box style deposit chute, through which donations could be submitted, but not removed. It was a one-way ticket of abandonment for discarded possessions regardless of any emotional meanings attached to them or not.
I spent the drive relatively silent, focused on the bags at my feet and specifically, the partially visible blue bear therein. I recall having one or two grocery bags filled, the majority of contents were items I was actually quite ready and quite willing to part with. But the blue bear, not so much. However, I had committed to this act verbally and in my actions. I had made dramatic claims to breaking from my infancy. So I had to follow through, even if it meant discarding a treasured object before I was completely ready to do so.
When we arrived, as my father held the bin door open, I hoisted and released the first bag. I was likely pale and trembling as I did the same with the next, and with a heavy heart, watched as the glass eyes of the blue bear stared blankly back at me while sliding into the dark abyss of the donation container. As my father released the handle, the sharp striking sound of the steel door slamming shut send a startled shudder of finality through my body. As I entered the car I held my head down, focused on my feet, while my father entered from the drivers side. I sat motionless, hating that I had done what I had just done on my own accord, and feeling completely helpless and incapable of doing anything at this point beyond just keeping my composure until we made it home. The deed was done. The bear was gone. My childhood was concluding.
We sat there for what seemed to be forever while I maintained a steady downward gaze and focused on the containment of my tears. And then the patient, empathetic and understanding voice of my father broke the silence with a single sentence that I have never forgotten to this day. "Do you want to get your blue bear back?". With that, I glanced in his direction and I broke down crying. He knew, likely from the outset and during my selection and bagging of my toys, that this one was more significant to me then I was willing to admit in order to maintain a posture of bravado and independence.
Without making me feel bad in any way whatsoever, he placed his hand on my shoulder and assured me that we would get him back. I believed the deed had been done, the die had been cast and the door had figuratively and literally just closed between that bear and I. But I believed my father more. And we did. By his holding the door open, hoisting me up and lowering me through the small chute and into the bin, I was on a reconnaissance mission. Find and retrieve that bear. At any cost. (And as a side note, my entry must have appeared incredibly bizarre to any bypasser who likely assumed my father had grown tired of me and wanted to pass me along to a younger father who would want to play with me more then he did anymore.)
It was hot, dark and quite uncomfortable in the bin, but my bags and my bear were within immediate reach. In the dimmest light that streamed in through the narrow slit of the open chute door, I found and clutched the outstretched hand of the stuffed animal I had so regretted discarding, and my father then reached in for my own outstretched hand, lifting me back up and out, and onto the pavement again. "HQ? Mission completed. The bear is in hand. Repeat: the bear is in hand."
When we got back into the car, I was filled with a sense of relief, and more so, great love and support from my father. I'd tried so hard to be strong, to be the grown-up boy, yet still had an emotional attachment to something from my infancy. And that was acceptable and OK. It was not only OK, it was fought for. Because it mattered to me, it mattered to him. And is that not one of the greatest gift a parent could ever bestow upon a child?
I don't think about that moment or my heartfelt desire to live that example nearly as much as I would like. Watching Toy Story 3 brought it all back to me, so dramatically and intensely that I returned again the following night to watch it once more.
I find myself routinely swept into the raging current of a day's demands, impatient while getting them into the car for school or wanting time to focus on my own interests or projects over their interest in engaging me in theirs. Yet without fail, when I stop and think it through, I realized that in every exchange, I have the opportunity, and the honor, of giving them the same feeling I had at that moment and still carry with me to this day. Recognizing that what matters to them, matters to me. And realizing that in the near future, just as Buzz and Woody found themselves in new surroundings as Andy drove away, my own children will go their own ways as they grow into teenagers, adults, and strike out on their own. The time I have to be an influence is fleeting, and I don't want to miss the chance to help my child build an airplane, paint a ceramic cup or rescue a discarded toy from a donation bin.