On those fortunate Fridays, we kids were given a mission by our mother.  We were to locate Steve, the mailman, and retrieve the check.  He usually delivered our mail after 4 pm when the banks would be closed, and we desperately needed groceries for the weekend.  If we could intercept Steve and get the government check, we would eat well.  If not, it might be hotdogs or meatless pasta again or a trip up on the hill, which is how we described where my grandparents lived.  If we were going up on the hill, we were going to visit Gramma and Grampa, and it was their firm position that there was always enough food to go around. 

Of course, I could not know then what my widowed mother was going through to raise five kids: what anxieties plagued her, what fears kept her from sleeping at night.  But when I became a father at an age my own father never reached, I became acutely aware that there was one person standing between my family and certain hardship: me.  My wife worked and contributed to what was brought in, by I was the main breadwinner.  It was my check that paid the rent.  The car note.  The insurance.  I took on multiple jobs, and for a spell when the girls were very little, worked at the college until 11 pm Monday through Thursday as the so-called Night Dean: an afterhours administrative role that was not really administrative at all.  I did it because it was necessary.  There was never really a choice in the matter.  I even did this on Saturday mornings while classes were in session. 

I learned that living hand to mouth as a child informed how I would be as a father.  I simply did not want my children to experience what I had experienced.  My mother did her very best, but it was still a one-person show.  I know, dear listeners, that there are many, many mothers like mine, and the chance that one of these mothers is yours is good, so you are quite familiar with the sheer greatness of this love because you have received it.  Only when I became a parent did I begin to understand that greatness – that unfathomable depth.  God gifted me like he gifts every man with aggression, and it was for me to harness that aggression and use it be a good provider. 

Like any parent, I did my best, but it was still hard not to notice the shortfalls or, at least, be sensitive to what I could not yet provide.  I accept that I was being dwarfed by a standard that was entirely self-imposed, but even so: it pained me when I could not locate my own Steves on time, could not give my children what I wanted to give them.  Up on the hill was never an option for me.  I had to slug it out in the valley. 

Here is a poem I wrote.  I hope it lands well. 

Dewdrops 

Of course we never knew 

the five of us 

were called dewdrops 

by the grownups in the neighborhood –  

the ones who had jobs, careers even, 

the ones who weren’t dead 

or single and on food stamps. 

It was their little joke, 

harmless, I suppose. 

We never knew 

until Dale Yucha who 

lived with both of his parents 

fiendishly put us in our place. 

“Dewdrops,” he snickered.  “My dad calls you all dewdrops.” 

How he delighted in delivering our shame, 

a wound that echoes still 

as my three daughters walk with their mismatched gloves from our 

rented, aged home to play with 

the neighbor kids 

who live in impossible houses, 

private bathrooms each, I’m sure. 

I watch my daughters through the frosty, thin window and 

look for the neighborhood ginger who 

would tell them this.