Wait Until Your Father Gets Home

I don’t think my brother and I were wild. Some of the neighbors might disagree. It was more like “boys will be boys!” My brother and I were practically best friends as kids. Although there were other boys in the neighborhood within a year or two of our age: Randy, Geoff and Paul, Vern and Ronnie – we both knew “blood was thicker than water.”

We frequently teamed and schemed against the neighbor boys. Sometimes it was subtle and sometimes more overt. But all those are stories for another time.

Sometimes Greg and I fought. Most of the time no one got hurt seriously although occasionally I would get kicked in the groin or my brother would get his head banged against the ground. When we got like that, mom couldn’t really do much except say “sit on the couch and wait until your father gets home.”

Sitting on the couch with my brother – waiting for Dad to walk in the front door – was painful. No matter what we had done, it seemed like that was punishment enough. Occasionally we would blame each other quietly as to not get into further trouble. Sometimes we would punch the others arm. “Mommmm!”

I know my father looked forward to coming home. He always wore a suit because you “need to dress for the job you want, not the job you have.” When he came home he was almost always in a good mood. But when the boys were "waiting for their father to get home” his look, his body language changed, and we knew we had disappointed him somehow.

He walked to the fireplace mantel and removed his Boeing badge, the pens, his glasses and wallet, keys and some change. Sometimes we would start crying just from "the look." He never said a word. Dad would head to his bedroom to change his clothes while we were weeping quietly (when we were younger, although we were sat on the couch as old as fourteen).

It never really seemed to matter “what” we had done – only that it had made Mom sit us on the couch to “wait until your father gets home.”

-Craig