United we stand on the Fifth of July
You know that part in “The Andy Griffith Show” when Deputy Barney Fife fumbles in his pocket and asks, “Can I use it now, Andy? Can I use my bullet?” That’s the kind of deputy I am: a mediocre-to-lousy shot. But I drive down to the airport range every month and fire a hundred rounds to remind myself how to do it. And every qualification day, in late June, the range master writes down “81” next to the name Paulson. Barely passing.
The 160 deputies who work for me depend on me to eke out that score. I’m the guy in charge of the biggest jail, and if I can’t shoot straight, then who can? We depend on each other to keep safe, and the city depends on us to “safeguard lives and property, to protect the innocent.”
But not just shooting. As I was walking out the door one Tuesday, a sergeant said, “Don’t forget the blueberry.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“It doesn’t take Nostradamus to predict that you pick up Krispy Kremes every other Wednesday.”
We’re an unsurprising family. When Laki, at Bravo’s Pizza, sees my telephone number, he answers, “Half pepperoni/ half cheese pizza. Chicken parm with spaghetti, not rigatoni. And you can’t be too generous with the sauce.” He depends on the business of people like us. And we depend on him to provide the best pizza in San Francisco every Friday night, the one meal of the week we don’t argue over, at the one place where they’ll let Aidan eat raw dough.
Brian and I have been together for 32 years, and part of that is because he is a brilliant and passionate dancer, but another part is that when I walk into Safeway with him, I can prophesy that I will never check out in the express lane.
When I first became a foster dad, I asked for a remedial parenting class. I had never changed a diaper, and I didn’t know any lullabies. Our social worker, Mary, explained to me that at-risk boys didn’t need any special skills. All they really needed was predictability: “Never throw a surprise party for a foster child.”
When Zane was young and I put him to bed at night, I asked him which story he wanted read, and every single night, for about three months, it was “Where the Wild Things Are,” until mysteriously, for the next three months, it would be “Harold and the Purple Crayon.” Zane didn’t want mystery. He wanted to know that both Max and Harold got back home and were safely in bed by the end of the book.
Zane never learned the screen defense from me, and I did not teach Aidan about skinks. But Brian and I have been there, every morning and every evening for 14 years. For 5,110 dinners Zane and Aidan have depended on the four of us sitting around the battered wooden kitchen table that Pop gave us the year that Nurse Vivian died. We have held hands even when we’re mad at each other, and we said grace, and at the end, we raised our juice glasses, “A toast! To the best boys in the world!” and Zane has always added, “Wherever they are.”
I never can tell which day Zane will walk out on summer school or which day Aidan will stick his head in a concrete staircase. But I do depend on the boys to be my moral compass. Every day I ask myself whether my boys would be proud.
Even the dogs foresee. The minute that I get up from the kitchen table, Krypto’s tail starts wagging because he depends on the fact that we never finish a pork chop without saving him a bite.
A year into this, I’ve come to depend on you readers. You tell me when I mistake the location of the Raccoon Strait, and you tell me when the story of the Snacky Dinner has resonated. At least one reader has told me that she has come to depend on my being her Wednesday morning antidote to the bad news in Section A.
Yesterday, on July 4, the nation celebrated Independence Day, and that is good. All things considered, I would hate speaking in a British accent and bowing to a queen. But today, and the rest of the days of the year, we celebrate the fact that we are all connected, that we depend on each other not just for our security, but also for our sense of family. And joy.
Happy Interdependence Day.
We have held hands even when we’re mad at each other, and we said grace, and at the end, we raised our juice glasses, “A toast! To the best boys in the world!” and Zane has always added, “Wherever they are.”