Telling My Dad

We went to San Antonio last weekend to celebrate my dad's birthday. It was our last parental reveal, and slightly touchier than our previous two. You really have to know my dad to understand the waters we were treading, but to give you a working picture, he (1) is NEVER wrong; (2) refuses to admit that he's aging...and then when he does admit it, he jumps straight to "I'm dying;" and (3) is a lifetime member of the NRA and was giving me my first tastes of beer when I was about 5 (about the age he started training me to bring him new beers when he had finished his last).

That said, he's also a wonderful, intelligent, loving dad who has always put a lot of creative effort into my birthday gifts (one classic example was him taping together 50 $5 bills end-to-end and rolling them up into a square tissue box so that I pulled them out like a big roll of toilet paper). We knew that we had to make the reveal interesting and creative in order to make BDO (Big Daddy-O...this was his "dad name" while I was growing up) feel important.

We had asked him a couple of months ago what he wanted his "grandpa name" to be--it was before we found out we were actually pregnant! He said "Pop," which is what we call my grandfather. So for one part of his present, we got him this onesie:
For the other part of his present, we made a fake "order confirmation" slip. Everything on it was a clue: the order number was 091409 (my due date). The cost was $250,000 (the estimate of what it costs to raise a child from 0-18; the shipping and handling was $5,000 (estimated cost of delivery). And the shipping date included a message that said "should ship in 150-160 business days."

So when it was time for gifts, we told him we had ordered him a custom gift but that it wasn't ready yet. So we had gotten him clues about what the gift was. He opened the "order confirmation" slip first and I was happy to see that he was suitably stumped for a while (I was a little worried he would figure it out immediately, and where's the fun in that??). But he loves a challenge (no secret where I got THAT from), and he kept after it.

And then his face lost all expression. Seriously, I have never seen my dad look so unguarded.

BDO: "Are you EXPECTING?"

There was no excitement in this question. It uttered with sheer shock.

I grinned and told him to open his other "clue."

He opened the onesie, and unlike my FIL, got it right away (especially b/c he had already figured it out).

BDO: "I need another beer." We laughed. "No, seriously. I need another beer."

He then went on to say how this was "totally unexpected" and he doesn't think he's "ever been so completely caught off guard and surprised in his entire life."

I admit, at this point I'm getting a bit miffed. For heaven's sake dad, I'm turning 30 in three weeks. We've almost been married 4 years. How unexpected could this really be? No "congratulations" were said. No questions about new cars or nurseries or any planning fun.

We went upstairs to get ready for dinner out, and TH could tell I was bothered by my dad's reaction. I was tearing up at the idea that he wasn't excited for us (my tears were not really all that significant as I cry at the drop of a hat these days), and TH, true to form, made me feel better with his sweet hilarity.

TH's take 1 on my dad's reaction: "He's as excited as he could ever be about something that doesn't involve boats or beer."

And, a couple of minutes later, TH's take 2: "It's not that he's not excited, it's just that he was forced to recognize that I am actually f*cking his daughter."

I think it's that my dad, who doesn't really like birthdays anyway b/c they call attention to the fact that he's another year older, just suddenly felt very old. You know, like a grandfather.

I spoke with him on Tuesday, and he was telling me how he had told everyone at work the following joke:

We had asked him what he wanted to be called when he was a grandfather. "Infrequently" he answered. "Well, Happy Birthday, Infrequently!"

Then he said, "It was funnier than the way it actually happened."

Strike #1: He told people at work after we had specifically told him to not tell anyone (and at the time he had responded like, "Who on Earth would I want to tell??").

Strike #2: He "improved" upon the way he was told, implying that our method was not story-worthy. And he made sure to tell us that he had improved the story.

But, as TH once again wonderfully pointed out, the fact that BDO was telling people at work is proof that he actually IS very excited, and that he's just an emotional cripple in relating that excitement to us.

I guess that's true. Now if I can just find a onesie that says "future drinking buddy," my dad might actually be on board with this.