By Dave Stafford, Herald Bulletin Staff Writer
PENDLETON — Kevin Ray pauses during a spirited morning of caring for his five children.
“Man, this is a lot of work,” he allows in quiet candor. “You get a whole different perspective. It gives you a lot of respect for the moms from years past.”
Ray is among a relative handful of American fathers — fewer than 150,000 — who are stay-at-home dads. On this recent morning, the three acres outside the family’s home on County Road 900 South are alive with activity as he and the kids race to finish chores and beat the rain.
“It’s comin’,” he says with a wary gaze toward a graying sky.
His oldest son, Dekland, 10, maneuvers a bushhog to push a flatbed trailer behind the house while Ray directs. “Back up, line up, and that way you get a better shot at it!”
Karmel, 9, mows the backyard, expertly handling the riding mower.
“I could do a lot of this myself,” Ray says, “but how will they learn to do stuff if I don’t tell them?”
Daughter Kelci, 7, and youngest sons Klaton, 5, and Kalum, who will turn 4 on July 1, play in the front yard and ride bikes in the driveway.
“Don’t go past the Explorer,” dad admonishes.
Ray, who directs youth T-ball for Pendleton Junior Baseball and third- and fourth-grade tackle for Pendleton Junior Football, laughs at the suggestion that he looks a little like a coach directing his youngsters. “That’s really what it comes down to.”
A few moments later, amid the noise, work, play and laughter of his children, Ray pauses again. “I love being home.”
u u u
Shawnee Ray knows the routine. She was a stay-at-home mom for the oldest three children until husband Kevin was hurt several years ago and could no longer continue his job at Ford Motor Co. in Indianapolis.
They traded places. “We’re both really involved in the kids’ lives, so it wasn’t a big ordeal,” she says in a telephone interview.
Shawnee is the manager of arthritis care centers at Clarion Health Partners in Indianapolis. She says the position allows her to spend time with her family, and when she must bring work home, it waits till after the kids are in bed.
“We’re both pretty consistent,” she says. “One thing we both agreed upon was that if we had kids we wanted to raise them in a nice, consistent manner.”
Not that they don’t have their own styles.
“My wife, sometimes she refers to me as her oldest kid,” Kevin says.
He confesses that play can get in the way of chores.
“We all have to chip in and help out a little bit ... we have a lot of stuff to keep up with,” he says. “At the same time, there’s some days where I am so tired of the monotony of laundry and dishes and we’ll say, ‘OK, guys, let’s just go hang out.’”
But that seems OK.
“I have got one of the greatest husbands ever,” Shawnee says. “ I don’t think that God could have put a better guy on Earth, and my kids, I wouldn’t trade anything for them.”
Ray sums up one of the rewards of a stay-at-home dad: “Just hearing a little bitty person say ‘I love you’ just makes you melt.”
-------
“I found a seed!” Kalum smiles, displaying it between his little thumb and forefinger as he bounds toward his dad. Kelci and Klaton, who’ve been nibbling little green apples from the tree, race over when dad asks, “You want to plant it?”
Within seconds the four youngest children are crouched in a circle around Ray as he scrapes bare a small piece of earth. “Now take the dirt and cover it,” he says.
“Come on Kelci, we’ll put one in the ground.
“Karmel, that’s yours.”
Klaton wonders where he can find a seed. Ray bites a small apple in half. “Check it out, bud. Seed’s in the middle.”
A minute later, the seeds are planted. The scramble ends with the children wiping their hands, dusting off the dirt, moving on to the next impromptu discovery.
A drop of rain falls.
Kelci, Klaton and Kalum head for the swingset, and Kelci rares back mightily, seeming to sense that time is short.
“It’s raining,” Ray calls, gathering the children as the drops begin to fall faster.
He calls again, and once more, and the children are moving from the backyard toward the garage. Kelci skips behind, repeating a familiar children’s refrain.
“It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring.”
-------
As the children come out of the rain, Ray’s playfulness takes over for a moment.
“Oh, wait ... This is great,” he gushes.
The children gather outside the garage around a homemade wooden stand with plastic pipes on top, connected to a garden hose. “If you guys want a drink, turn it on.”
Amid a chorus of giggles, a switch is turned and thin streams of water shoot out like a fountain. “Whoa! Turn it down,” dad laughs. It’s a design he credits to an old football coach.
As the rain picks up, the children make their way inside, where chores await. Ray opens a dishwasher that needs emptied. “Dekland and Karmel, you do the top half.”
Ray begins assigning tasks that are answered with mild groans.
As he’s doing so, he notices that a pile of little green apples has appeared on the kitchen island. He is not amused.
“Kelci, did you bring the apples in?”
She smiles coyly, says nothing and begins to reach for them until dad intervenes. “Leave ’em there, leave ’em there ...”
In the living room, the youngsters are assigned to fold laundry.
“Dad, is this your towel or my towel?” Karmel asks.
“As long as it gets folded, I don’t care,” Ray answers as wipes clean the kitchen counter to prepare for lunch.
He announces, “You guys get the house clean, laundry folded up, and we’ve got ‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars.’” The excited kids respond, and the next several minutes are industrious.
“After lunch, we might have to turn Wii on,” Ray says. “Yep,” Dekland responds as he helps get the kitchen ready.
“Can I have a banana?” Karmel asks his dad.
“Yeah, after you take that vacuum and wrap it up and put it away.” Everyone laughs.
In a moment of relative calm, Ray finds a second for another pause while sweeping the kitchen floor.
“If you really love your kids, you do what you gotta do,” he says, “because I detest housework.”
-------
“Want an orange?” Ray asks. Kelton smiles wide for several seconds.
And several more.
“Yes!”
It turns out all five kids do, and Ray really didn’t have to ask. “When I call your name, that means your orange is ready,” he says, slicing off the skins and putting each child’s orange in a bowl. This is not lunch, just a snack to tide the kids over.
“You know the old saying, ‘Mom eats last?’ It’s true,” Ray says.
He’s getting lunch lined up, and Dekland comes in to help, as he often does — “inside, outside, any way I can help him,” he says.
“It is lunchtime,” Ray announces. “What do we want?”
“Egg! ... Hot dog! ... Oatmeal!”
Oatmeal?
“No surprise there,” Ray deadpans as he spies his youngest fetch a packet of instant oatmeal.
Soon Dekland is frying up a skillet full of scrambled eggs as dad cooks up hot dogs and the single oatmeal order.
“Some days I come in and say, ‘We’re eating peanut butter sandwiches,’” Ray confesses. “There’s just sometimes ... it’s a tiring job. Other days I’ll say ‘tell me what you want and I’ll fix it.’”
It’s tough work, and Ray said the family food budget runs $250 to $300 every two weeks, and that’s with economizing.
Soon the orders begin to change.
“Can I have a hot dog and an egg?” Kelton asks.
In a few minutes, Ray has the hot dog made to order, cooked up, wrapped in a piece of cheese, with “Kelton” written in mustard cursive.
-------
Over lunch, dad offers a treat for the kids — if they’re good, the family will go to the drive-in theater in New Castle over the coming weekend.
“It’s fun,” Kelci says.
And as entertainment goes, “I can take the whole family for like 21 bucks,” Ray says. The kids also can play outside before the movie, and taking their own food makes it a fun, affordable experience.
“I guarantee, that’s something they’ll remember,” Ray says.
They talk about where vacation will be this summer. Florida, Dekland suggests.
These days, when school is out and the kids are home and don’t have ballgames, are actually the easy ones, Ray says.
“When ball’s in, and we’re going from one thing to the next, it’s unreal,” Ray says. He says he’s grateful for friends who help out and watch some of the kids while he shuttles others. He says he wouldn’t be able to do it without them.
Ray talks with unrestrained pride about his children — Dekland and Karmel are honor-roll students getting ready for youth football; Kelci will join a youth cheer program in the fall; Klaton plays coach’s pitch and flag football and Kalum is already looking forward to kindergarten. “He’s extremely excited. He’s way past ready,” Ray says.
The children all have equal praise for their dad. They all say he’s the best.
“He’s the best dad ever,” Kelci says, smiling sweetly at Ray, then demanding, “Where’s my juice?”
