I wasn’t ready for it. Not yet.

I mean, I knew it would come one day like a thunderstorm or like something I sent away for in the mail.

But I just didn’t think it would happen on a nondescript morning like this.

But parenthood is funny like that.

One moment you’re cruising along, one hand on the wheel, window down, sunglasses on and then, like a sucker punch, you’re reminded that you’re not in control, and probably never have been. So with a pair of mangled sunglasses dangling off an ear, you straighten up and attempt to piece together what just happened.

Sunday morning.

I wake the coffee maker, and the laptop, move to the kitchen sink and watch slivers of morning light break the dark veil of day and think about you. I think about what I want to say to you this week.

For the past three weeks I wrote about my son Chase, choking in my arms. Over that time, through the vehicles of imagination and memory, I’ve been traversing into the heart of my most unnerving experience.

Frankly, I needed a break.

I wanted to lighten the mood around here. And plus, with this Killer Clown Craze and the Presidential Election ( two unrelated yet often confused headlines) dominating our nightly news, we could use it.

The coffee maker burps, grunts and beeps. I pour a cup and move to the living room.

I park myself on the couch, sip, stare into the glowing face of the laptop and wait. I wait for the barrel-chested ghost of Ernest Hemingway to appear and inspire me, remind me that all I have to do is “write one true sentence” but instead of Ernie H., Chase turns the corner sporting glassy eyes, a spiky tuft of bedhead and his faded green Ninja Turtle pajamas. Pajamas that have been machine-washed too many times. Pajamas that fit him nicely in June but are now thread-stretched to its limits, forcing the brave Donatello to beg for mercy.

Chase curls next to me. He rests his head on my shoulder.

The TV is off yet we watch it like its on. The sun is rising behind me, filling the windows, warming my back.

“Hey dad, do I have a soccer game today?”

“Yes you do buddy.”

“Hey dad, do you think when I’m older I could be a soccer player? Like the kind that plays on TV.”

I tussled his bedhead. Smile and in a hearty dad voice offer my son the most unoriginal dad response I could, “Son, you can be anything you want to be.”

Things were perfectly quit between us. Just a father and his son enjoying the company of each other in the slow of a Sunday morning.

“Hey dad?”

“Yes, buddy?’

Do you know the “f” word?”

Pow! Sucker punch. Chew on that dad.

“Uh, um, uh…yeah? What? I mean, do you?”

“Yeah. Fuck. Fuck is the f-word”

I cocked my head like a little dog when he hears her name and held it for some time just wondering.

“Bud, where did you learn that?”

“School.”

“That’s a bad word. We don’t say that word.”

“Ok Dad I won’t say it.”

But I know he will. I can’t expect him to unlearn the word. I didn’t. You didn’t.  The word is now forever buzzing about his brain, like a bee in a jar, waiting for its chance to fly loose and sting his sentences–Fuck me these pajamas are tight!

The sun warmed the windows and my coffee cooled and I held Chase close feeling that weird mix of hilarity and sadness that is parenthood.

Hearing my son, with aggressive bedhead and tight Ninja Turtle pajamas, drop the “f” bomb was– funny. But I understand its significance. It’s gravity and weight. It’s a sad indication that the world has sunk its grimy fangs into him. And there is nothing I can do.

Cindy and I police our language around the kids.

But here’s the scary parental truth– we can only protect, shelter our children for so long. Sooner or later their little bodies will be at the mercy of the world. And yet, as parents we know that we must send our children off into that tumult — to learn, to discover, to get hurt.  Like us, they will be damaged and they will return home talking dirty. It’s just the price we all must pay.

So what do we do when our children learn the “f” word?

Cut out their tongues?

Of course not.

We can just reinforce it’s a bad word. And if he says it again I will correct him again.

But I can’t be naive. By identifying words as “bad” I’m only planting seeds of curiosity. Chase will surely lie in bed at night, further stretching out the Turtles, and wonder what other bad words loom out in the darkness, where the killer clowns and presidential candidates reside.

Things were quiet. With Chase’s head still on my shoulder I thought about how growing up, losing innocence, vilifying your vocabulary are as natural and normal as the rising sun.

Hey Dad?

Yeah?

“What do you call a skunk driving a helicopter?”

“What?”

” A smell-a-copter.”

I smiled, tussled his bedhead again and felt the warm reassurance that I still have plenty more quiet mornings with my little boy.

Be well,

Jay