When John Deschner helped John Jefferson ’96 revive The Bachelor in the mid-90s, his sharp wit and pen in the College newspaper earned him the nickname “monkey with a shotgun.” A decade and years in marketing haven’t taken the edge off John, but a more recent arrival has revealed another side:
I fought this assignment to write for Wabash Magazine for a couple of weeks. I wanted to string together something darker and more brutal. My Mac desktop is littered with scraps of stories about abusing very expensive and hard-to-find drugs, 30-year-old Scotch and septuagenarian sexual predators, and fantastic tangents about human resources managers being gang-raped by sailors.
But I can’t get away from a story about a nap. A mid-afternoon on-a-god—m-quilt nap.
My family and I were in the middle of a protracted move back to Washington, DC from Boulder, Colorado, and I hadn’t seen my son, Henry, for 10 days. Later that week, I sent an email to be read to him someday.
Fatherhood is a funny thing. Any man who tells you he’s ready and confident in his abilities is lying. It’s frightening and often maddening. And I have been sack-punched more in the last three years than in the previous 30. But what I wrote to my son very late at night a couple months ago sums up being a dad for me.
January 25, 2009
Henry,
You are three-and-a-half years old. You’ve been progressing into something I can relate to as humanhood for the last year-and-change. We hang out; take trips together (to see elk); talk about toys, cartoons, and sports; and sing along to some bloody good songs. Your coming into this world was far and away the best thing that’s ever happened in my whole life—and I’ve had a pretty good ride of it so far. Your mom knows most of those stories and can fill you in if you’re ever interested and I’m not available to regale you for some reason.
This afternoon you and I got back from having a stroll and a bit of soccer with Voodoo and your cousins. Then we had a snack and some cocoa, then went upstairs to read some Alice in Wonderland, then had a nap. Simple, unremarkable, but as I started to stir around 2 p.m., I had occasion to think that I wouldn’t have traded those two hours for anything. I think the phrase that zipped around my head a bit was, “If I had two hours left on Earth, I could see spending them this way.”
There are certainly good and bad days ahead for us. But there was a day in early 2009 when you and I had a nap together with winter sun streaming through the window. I have some strengths—being happy most of the time isn’t one of them. For those two hours on January 25, 2009, I was honestly happy, content, complete, and at rest. I couldn’t honestly ask for more.
I owe you, kid.
Love,
Your Dad