June 25, 2006
Mangroves
Even a year and a half into fatherhood, it is sometimes easy to forget you are a dad. You will be driving through a mangrove swamp somewhere in Florida at night and just be a guy driving with the windows down keeping the radio spinning through stations on scan waiting for just the right music come up and enjoying the long periods of static... That invisible tether that connects you to wife and child is slack and you are momentarily unaware of it. Mosquitoes buzz around outside and are being killed on the windshield at an alarming rate but you figure at 85mph what are the odds of one making it into the car. And then one does and lands on your arm, puncturing your flesh discretely but leaving an immediate welt so itchy and painful you feel compelled, to roll up the windows, pull over and punish the beast for it’s transgression. The splatter of blood left on inside of the passenger’s side window, while impressive, leaves you less satisfied than you might think, so you roll on. But as your arm itches you remember you wife’s email about your son being attacked by mosquitoes, and the monster itchy welts they left all over his body and suddenly the tether goes taught and all you want in the world is to be back with your family, battling mosquitoes and doing the things that dad’s do.
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