Manopausal fathers don't have many options. They cannot run away from the problem, as their knees are nothing more than a jumble of cartilage and bone chips, and they can't even reason their way through the mess, as their brains have become mushier than a bowl full of day-old corn flakes fermenting in whole milk. All they can do is cope with the problem, much like they are forced to cope with Richard Simmons. The problem looms, but they can't change the channel.
The manopausal father knows only one way forward . . . and that is to love, and to love deeply. That's why his checkbook is available and why, at any given moment, four checks are missing. Love is the reason he sells his plasma at $50 a quart and love is the reason he sticks with the old wife, because she has greater earning potential. Love is the reason he has pre-planned his funeral and informed the undertaker to remove his spleen prior to embalming so it can be sold on eBay. And love is the reason he has instructed his wife to bury him in the backyard next to the septic tank. Cemetery plots cost money and cardboard boxes are free in liquor store dumpsters.
Periodically, the manopausal father also takes inventory of his own marriage, and begins to reminisce with his wife, especially as the wedding date looms. He reminds his honeybun that, when he married her, he was a virgin himself, and that ought to count for something. He could have done the nasty with a dozen other girls (heck, make that three dozen!), but he chose her, and reminds his wife that, the last time they did the mambo was probably the night the bride-to-be was conceived, and that was eons ago around the time that fire was invented. He tries to make light of this, or writes a poem to create a mood, but his wife is all business and wants to talk about the table cloths at the reception or the color of the candles. "What if someone spills a jar of mustard?" she wonders. He feels like spilling his brains.
The manopausal father tries to kiss his wife during the wedding-planning blitzes and create romantic one-liners like, "Can you believe our little girl is getting married?" or "Where did the years go?" or "Do you think you can still fit your big butt into your wedding dress?" He is so old he no longer has a sense of propriety or going too far or stepping over the line. He just blurts the first thing that pops into his head and apologizes for it later while he is eating a bowl of Shredded Wheat. He knows his wife will forgive him because she loves him and because she has no other prospects for love, especially if he were dead and had not yet cleaned out his sock drawer or the hair traps in the master bathroom sink. He knows much of his DNA will live on inside the pipes and that, whenever she gets lonely, his wife can always scape a bit of his hide from the seat cushion of his office chair, where he once sat and wrote blogs and stories and whole books for years on end.
In the end, the manopausal father is happy for his daughter. He loves her. He wants the best for her. He hopes she will be as happy in her marriage as her mother is . . . as her mother is married to such a great man, a remarkable father, who cannot be replaced. He invites his daughter to talk to her mother about these things . . . and ask, "Is Dad really that special?" or "Why can't Dad cook something other than chili?"
(He's not special, of course.) But who's going to tell?
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