The Spera children – from left, Sophie, 14, Celia, 10, and Sam, 12 – with dad Keith Spera outside his former dormitory at Texas A&M University on May 28, 2022.
The Spera children – from left, Sophie, 14, Celia, 10, and Sam, 12 – with dad Keith Spera outside his former dormitory at Texas A&M University on May 28, 2022.
Celia Spera hangs out with fossilized remains of a prehistoric mammoth near Waco, Texas, in May 2022.
Keith Spera, left, explores the woods in central Texas with his daughter Sophie and son Sam, while daughter Celia pouts in the background.
Celia and Sam Spera explore the woods in central Texas in May 2022.
The Spera children – from left, Sophie, 14, Celia, 10, and Sam, 12 – with dad Keith Spera outside his former dormitory at Texas A&M University on May 28, 2022.
The Spera children – from left, Sophie, 14, Celia, 10, and Sam, 12 – with dad Keith Spera outside his former dormitory at Texas A&M University on May 28, 2022.
Keith Spera, left, explores the woods in central Texas with his daughter Sophie and son Sam, while daughter Celia pouts in the background.
A small national park near Waco, Texas, preserves an archaeological site where a cluster of mammoths were unearthed. The fossilized mammoths comprised a “nursery herd”: juveniles being protected and raised by their mothers, aunts and other female relatives.
The daddy mammoths were nowhere to be found. They did not, apparently, celebrate Father's Day.
Ironically enough, I viewed this evidence of extinct absentee fathers during an attempted bout of bonding with my own three children.
Our recent Texas trip was intended as a deep dive into my, and thus their, past. What child wouldn’t relish the prospect of spending a sweltering afternoon on the deserted campus of their father’s alma mater, hearing tales of his long-ago hijinks?
Thus, Sophie, 14, Sam, 12, and Celia, 10, endured a Dad-guided tour of Texas A&M University. I was borderline giddy as the memories came flooding back.
Look, kids, here’s the loading dock I fell off of after a night of…studying!
See, there’s the window of the dorm room where I did a lot of…studying!
And that’s Dudley’s Draw, the watering hole where I spent many hours…studying!
Outside the football stadium, I hopped out of the minivan to pose alongside the larger-than life statues of students standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a traditional Aggie cheer – and promptly got stung by a wasp.
Sophie shook her head, regretting only that my flailing wasn’t captured on video.
Celia Spera hangs out with fossilized remains of a prehistoric mammoth near Waco, Texas, in May 2022.
We moved on to the town where my late mother grew up and where my dad has lived since Hurricane Katrina. Grandpa Frank keeps his house immaculate. My kids would soon fix that.
To their amazement, they learned that, in his 83 years, he had never seen a “Star Wars” movie. They fixed that, too.
Years ago, my maternal grandparents lived on a rural, five-acre piece of land. Behind it were woods and a creek with rock shelters used in prehistoric times. During childhood visits, my brothers and I spent hours exploring the woods and hunting for arrowheads. These are some of my fondest memories.
What, then, could be better than introducing my own children to this cherished place?
A lot of things, it turned out.
The property’s current owners graciously welcomed us. They erected a ladder over the barbed wire fence so I could lead my kids down to the creek, the source of so much childhood adventure.
The woods were far more overgrown than I remembered. Beset by brambles, bugs, heat and her innate fear of poison ivy and snakes, Celia grew progressively less happy. She pushed away a thorny branch with her bare hand, then let go. It snapped back and smacked her in the face.
“I hate EVERYTHING about this place!!!!!” she shouted.
When she wept for the second time, we abandoned our expedition. We never got to the creek. In 20 minutes, we had progressed approximately 60 feet.
Celia and Sam Spera explore the woods in central Texas in May 2022.
The 100-year-old country church where my grandparents are buried is air-conditioned and free of serpents and poisonous plants, so the kids were far more comfortable there. So comfortable, in fact, that all three fell asleep during the sermon.
Another favorite childhood destination was Inner Space, a cave north of Austin. Forty-plus years after the fact, I vividly recall descending into the Earth aboard a cable car to marvel at stalactites and stalagmites and experience complete darkness when the tour guide flipped off the lights.
Sadly, the cable car is gone. Visitors now tramp down a paved slope on foot into the humid underground.
At Inner Space, Celia wasn’t feeling well; one of her periodic fever flares was coming on. “Can you carry me on your shoulders?” she asked.
On a slick, slanted, cement path with a low ceiling? She’d like the possible results of that even less than a walk in the woods.
In a tactical error, Sophie asked me to hold her new, light-green hoodie, which I quickly managed to stain with red dirt.
“How did you do that?” she demanded, the parent-child roles briefly reversed.
Because we were the last tour of the day, our teenage guide allowed Sam to turn off the cave lights behind us on the way out. “I’ve never let anyone else do that,” he said.
Sam, much to his sisters’ consternation, has an Obi-Wan Kenobi-like ability to get strangers to let him do things. He is also chronically unfiltered.
Back at Grandpa Frank’s house, he examined high school portraits of my brothers and I. “Your face looks weird,” he informed my brother Chris, before assuring him he’s cuter now.
Just before we left, Grandpa Frank flipped through an old family photo album with Celia and Sam.
“Where’s my mom?” Sam asked repeatedly, not particularly interested in paternal history prior to my wife’s arrival.
Grandpa Frank prefaced one old photo with, “I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie ‘Pretty Woman’….”
No, we’ve not yet introduced Sam and Celia to the “hooker with a heart of gold” film genre.
He moved on to another snapshot: “This is how I lost all my hair, coaching a girls’ basketball team.”
And another: “This is from Uncle Chris’ first marriage.”
“FIRST MARRIAGE?!!?,” Celia exclaimed, shocked to discover that her Aunt Edie isn’t Chris' first wife.
Ah, the things you learn from old photos.
Even as we explored the past, we were writing a fresh chapter in our own family’s history.
And unlike those missing mammoth dads, I’m glad to be part of it.
Staff writer Keith Spera chronicles his parenting adventures in the occasional column "The Paternity Test."
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Email Keith Spera at kspera@theadvocate.com.
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