Busted

Ah, the power of children. They can make us do things we wouldn't normally do, say things we wouldn't normally say, and feel things we wouldn't normally feel. Which is beautiful. Normally. In this case, my youngest daughter made me feel pretty bad about something I couldn't justify at all. Which is pretty good, but very hard to confront. God, I need a good rationalization.

I had taken the girls for an overnight in the Adirondack Mountains with my buddy and his two girls. We've done this for a few years now, he always gets the same cabin on 13th Lake, and we all feel pretty comfortable with the arrangement. We swim in the lake, have a hot dog roast, the girls have squirt gun wars, and, once darkness falls, we have a nice fire for smores and- for the dads- beer.

Now in years past the festivities have stopped at that, but this year we added one element to the grown up buffet: Cigars. Now, my kids know I don't smoke. In fact, I haven't had a cigar in ages, but I figured this one night would be okay. I even went to Habanas, a premium cigar shop in Albany, to purchase the smokes. These were not cheap cigars, either, although they weren't as expensive as, I learned from shopping, some of the more premium varieties.

So, fire roaring and children tucked away, we imbibed a bit of single malt and lit up. Now, I'm not sure if the sudden Adirondack storm that forced us onto the side porch played any significant role in my being discovered, but I know that my proximity to the house didn't help much when my ten year old came down unable to sleep. I held the stogie behind my back, and I thought she was groggy enough to not notice, but these are cigars, right? The smoke is enough to stun a four hundred pound grizzly. She noticed, although she didn't say anything as I gave her solace and sent her back to bed.

At ten the next morning, though, as I was battling a bit of a big head from the single malt, she called me into the mudroom for an impromptu conference. "You were smoking last night, I saw you," she said. "Mom's going to kill you." I tried to placate her by saying that my wife, in fact, knew that I was bringing the cigars. This only added to her consternation. Unable to come up with a justifiable reason for my actions, I hustled us into pack up mode and hoped for a sudden bout of pre-teen amnesia. No such luck.

In the car on the way home, my oldest joined in. Now the guilt was flying full force. "You lied to us, Daddy. You said you would never smoke," she said. And this, with the addition of tears, "Why would you make such a bad choice?" There it was- my words thrown back at me. I could almost hear myself saying "Make good choices!", and see my kids nodding gravely,big brown eyes staring back at me from the living room floor. What could I say to their accusation? I had no response other than Grown ups can make choices, and sometimes they're not always good, but as a grownup I can make those choices. Kind of lame. Kids can make you think in those ways. I have no legitimate reason to have smoked, I just did. I got caught. The kids rightly made me feel like garbage. Like I was a teenager all over again and I had let my folks down. Lesson learned. Actions and words, which are the strongest? Duh. So I taught them a pretty crappy lesson, and got saddled with a whole mess of much deserved guilt.

And, like guilt, the vile taste of the cigar still lingers in my mouth. Gross.