Nico (left) and Christopher observing the land on our train ride.
September 26th, 2012
Man, I feel like I’m in a deeper hole then I have ever been in before. When the ground is eye level and your standing up-right, things can’t be good. It gets worse when you think you’ve hit rock bottom only to find out that you haven’t actually made it there yet. It just kills your morale ya know? You’ve only dug yourself further down beneath the rocks and gravel when finally figured out that "maybe you haven't gotten anywhere," well, that reality really sucks.
Mentally, it kills you. It makes all the strides you’ve been making seem like a fallacy because, you’ve been digging deeper down in that same hole the entire time.
When you reach this level of lowness. you look for the light heartedness of life that will lift-up your spirits. But when the soil falls from the ground level and blinds you from the real sunlight or any light for that matter that would shed some comfort to your plight it can be difficult.
Just the other day my youngest son was in the bathroom. Which is a big no-no in this house because the boys seem to flush whatever they can find down the toilet like, loose change (no problem), toothbrushes (we got three in there once), car keys (well that one was my fault, shame on me).
So the moment I hear one of them rascals in the bathroom, I know it can’t be good.
“Christopher! Are you in the bathroom,” I shout.
I hear the toilet seat slam against the porcelain base. I immediately run to the bathroom in the hopes to catch anything that might be ready to travel down the bottom of the toilet that isn’t the tidy bowl man. As I round the corner Christopher heads out of the bathroom, because he heard me calling his name, scratch that, yell his name, that boy was headed out of Dodge.
He either wanted to avoid my lecture or was running from the scene of the crime.
“What the,” I say flabbergasted, “Why is your head wet? Christopher, why is your hair wet,” I had to ask twice because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
I walk into the bathroom and notice the water scattered about the floor like dirty laundry. Yes, without being bullied he was filling a cup that was stored with the bathroom supplies that is used to rinse the soap off their heads and body and was dunking it in the toilet water and pouring it on him.
I move up a notch from this dark hole where I am stranded; the smiling is helping. The thought of the innocence of a child wanting to go for a swim, albeit a toilet bowl, is heartwarming . It makes me chuckle. I wish I caught him before he did it the dastardly deed.
My thoughts venture on to more mischief that the boys have been getting into. I mean not only did they just throw my new boat ignition keys overboard without any type of safety feature attached to the key ring; but Nico once locked Mimie, my wife, his own mother, out of the house.
“Hello? It’s hard to hear Mimie I’m on the gun range,” I shout into my cellular phone to Mimie who is on the other side of the call. I can hear Mimie frantically yelling from her end.
I was out training with the police department far from home, We were conducting an all day and night shooting qualifier that we must do each year. Mimie had just stepped outside to go to the car and get some groceries from the back of her mini-van and in that brief moment Nico, our four old son, seized the moment and locked her out of the house with a simple twist of the rotating lock. He wasn’t being mean or anything; he just knew how to lock the door. He wasn't very good at unlocking it.
“Mimie,” I say trying to calm her down, “I think I understand what you’re saying. Let me call the police department and have an officer stop over and try and help you.”
At this time I’m on one knee just behind the firing line under a pavilion, trying to shield my head into my arm in an attempt to muffle the sound of gun shots in the background.
“I’ll call you back in a minute.” I immediately call the police department. Luckily for us, it is the same department I work for.
“Hey Tiffany it’s Fusaro. Yes Fusaro” she asks again because it’s hard to hear me. I rise to my feet and yell into the phone.
[Author Note]
In any kind of military organization or organization ran on the chain of command system, we normally call everyone by their last name. I say normally because some day’s you can just be called "shit head." Depending on how bad you screwed up.
“Tiffany, can you send a cop to my house and assist with getting my wife in. My son locked my wife out!” I shout. “MY son locked my wife out,” I shout again.
I pause momentarily when I realize the quite around me. I turn my body around and notice at the firing line the guys were done shooting. They all stopped to turn and stare at me and man were they enjoying the moment.
“My son,” I announce as I begin to hold the phone away from my ear, “locked my wife out of the house.” I remove my finger from my ear and my voice trails off.
Long pause.
I move a notch higher above the soil that is piled alongside my hole because my laughing lifts me up. That hole that seems to be defining who I am lately.
On a recent trip to Disney World in
“Boys,” I announce out loud in a restaurant at the Magic Kingdoms Future World. "Stay close guys. Stay close," I say like a broken record.
Actually, as long as I can see them I'm fine. I just say something to appease all the people around me who are judging me as my boys figure out what life is like beyond their stroller.
I laugh hard because I know my laughter is the best medicine. I’ll use the laughter to lift me up to where we all want to be and out of this hole. So I can be happy in life and high enough to see the suns light shine through.
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