{"id":16219,"date":"2020-09-14T05:00:59","date_gmt":"2020-09-14T09:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bullmensfiction.com\/?p=16219"},"modified":"2022-08-03T13:12:24","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T17:12:24","slug":"swan-dive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/fiction\/swan-dive\/","title":{"rendered":"Swan Dive"},"content":{"rendered":"

I like to take a toothpick and throw it in the forest and say, You’re home!<\/em>\u00a0My children hate my jokes. But I\u2019m a father. We are supposed to make these jokes. Part of being a good parent is how I think of it. And I am a good parent when I have my girls, which is only one weekend a month and four weeks in the summer. Each time it is like we\u2019re starting over, like I\u2019m in a foreign land where nothing works the way I think it will and I get nervous, tell jokes they hate, trip over things, get lost on the way to the pool, bump into walls. By the end of these weekends I feel bruised and battered. After four weeks in the summer I feel like I need a wheelchair.<\/p>\n

Regardless of my general confusion while they\u2019re with me, I\u2019m think I\u2019m a pretty decent dad. I remember to feed and water them. I take them to the public pool. I order pizza and Chinese food as a treat and cook the rest of the time. We watch bad movies that I let them pick. Last night we watched a movie that\u2019s a modern take on Cinderella and I wanted to tear out my eyeballs, but my three daughters sat rapt in front of the screen, hanging on to every inane word that came out of that tween princess\u2019s mouth. Ellie is six and probably shouldn\u2019t be watching movies like this, but Melissa and Caroline, my thirteen-year-old twins, always say they shouldn\u2019t have to pay for my and their mother\u2019s mistake. Yes, they\u2019re referring to Ellie, but they insist she\u2019s in on the joke.<\/p>\n

I wonder about this a lot. Being a decent dad, I mean. Is it a good sign my girls feel comfortable punching me when I make a bad joke? That they see me as approachable enough to punch? My own father was cold and distant and I like to think my daughters see me as more of a friend. A friend they sometimes punch. But I don\u2019t want them to think I\u2019m trying too hard to be their buddy. After all, it\u2019s important that children know there are limits. It makes them feels safe is what I read somewhere. I wonder if they miss me when they\u2019re with their mother. It\u2019s not a question I can ask my twins, but Ellie is young enough to be brutally honest about the fact that all she really needs is her mother.<\/p>\n

No, Daddy, I don\u2019t miss you when we\u2019re at home, <\/em>she answers, without any hesitation, while lounging with me at the public pool. She says this with a smile, her cheeks still full to bursting with baby fat.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m glad,<\/em> I say, and squeeze her tightly, feel her giggle into my chest and then push away. She skips over to the wading pool and splashes under a purple hippo-elephant looking thing. Her little body is strong as she windmills her arms through the spray. Across from us I watch the twins jump and dive from the highest boards, and I cringe as they arch their long, thin bodies, all skin and bone after their most recent grown spurt. They choreograph swan dives, and flips, they fling their elastic bodies backwards, stretching their arms behind them and arrowing into back dives that slice the surface of the water. They jump, dive, and flip without hesitation, as if they know something I don\u2019t, as if somehow, no matter how they fall, they\u2019ll land safely.<\/p>\n

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Is it a good sign my girls feel comfortable punching me when I make a bad joke?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":16399,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2408],"class_list":["post-16219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-dad-jokes-girl-dad","writer-yasmina-din-madden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16219"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16400,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16219\/revisions\/16400"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}