A Good Man

My dad was overweight for most of his adult life; he changed careers three times before settling uneasily into his job as a professor of education at YSU; he and my mom didn't get along all that well; and he suffered from depression, diabetes, and psoriasis. His was not an easy life, and yet he was a good man and a good dad. Although it's hard for me to believe now, there were a few times when we were growing up that I wished he'd go away and not come back. Yet I barely remember those dark days. What I remember is a dad who sat on the floor and played blocks with us, who made up bedtime stories about two hippopotamuses named Daisy and Lulabelle, who taught us to play four-square, who left packages of M & M's under our pillows on nights when he had a late class, and who gave us Friday night dimes to spend in town. When we grew up and left home, he supplied us with cameras, air conditioners, VCRs, and computers. He kept us connected with his Weekend Update emails and his frequent telephone calls. And since he didn't travel much, especially toward the end of his life, he made sure we knew we were always welcome visitors. As Father's Day approaches, I treasure the memories I have of my dad. Although he was far from perfect, just like the rest of us, he got the big stuff right: first of all, my dad was always in my corner--I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he would go to bat for me if I needed him to; second, he believed in me--he thought I was smarter, more athletic, and more talented than I actually was; and finally, he loved me--completely and absolutely. So although it's been eleven years since I've bought a card or a gift for my dad on Father's Day, I am blessed every single day by the gifts he left with me.

Ancora Imparo ("I Am Still Learning")

I've been reading through an old journal recently. In an entry from September of 1986, I wrote, "It's so hard being grown-up sometimes." I was twenty-five, and Steve was twenty-six. If I had looked back on those early days of adulthood without reading through the journal, I probably would have said those were simpler, easier times. We were young and healthy.  We were back in school, we had relatively few possessions, we didn't own a house yet. In fact, I would have said we were relatively carefree.  But my journal entries tell a different story, a story I'd almost forgotten.  We were a couple of months away from the birth of our first child, and we were wrestling with decisions about the future, having second thoughts about careers, worrying about how we were going to support ourselves and our child. When I was a kid, I remember marveling at everything my parents knew and could do. I wondered how I would ever learn it all. There's a scene in the novel The Watsons Go to Birmingham--1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis where the narrator, ten-year-old Kenny, says, "Dad, I don't think I'll ever know what to do when I'm grown-up.  It seems like you and Momma know a lot of things that I can never learn. It seems real scary." In the fall of 1986, I was feeling much the same way. How did people learn to be grown-ups? There were so many things about life we didn't know.  What should we do or who should we call when the baby wouldn't stop crying, when we couldn't use the easiest tax form anymore, when the engine light came on, when the plaster crumbled, when the pipes were leaking or clogged or frozen, when something on my skin looked funny, when Steve noticed a strange lump on the back of his leg, when one of our kids was sick or hurt or heartbroken? But as time passed, we learned how to soothe a baby, how to do our taxes, how to use a pipe wrench; we found doctors, plumbers, and mechanics we trusted; we figured out how to tend to broken bones and broken hearts. Yet even now, twenty-seven years later, I have to admit, there are still a great many things that I don't know, and I suspect if I asked my mom, she'd say the same thing. So I guess what I've learned more than anything else is that you're never done learning. Plus, I was right all along--it is hard being grown up sometimes.

4:33

My first-born child arrived at 4:33 on Wednesday, November 19, 1986--fifteen days after his due date.  After all those months of waiting and after twenty-four hours of labor, he was finally here.  It was well worth the wait: the minutes, hours, and days that followed were some of the happiest of my life.  I will always remember the short drive home from the hospital.  We were driving down Central Avenue in our little white Toyota, a street I'd been on hundreds of times, but I felt completely disoriented.  It seemed as though the world had changed while I was in the hospital.  As it turned out, it was my world that had changed. Every year on Ben's birthday, I'd pause at 4:33 and savor the memory of the moment he was born.  I think some years we even toasted the time with sparkling grape juice.  In recent years, due partly to the emergence of digital clocks and cell phones, a strange thing has happened.  At least two or three times a week, I happen to glance at the clock on the microwave or at the front screen of my phone right at 4:33, not at 4:32 or 4:34 but exactly at 4:33.  It happened just yesterday.  Although I've been a parent now for more than twenty-six years, I still feel a little shiver of awe every time I see 4:33.  I marvel at the way my world changed forever in just that moment, and I breathe up a prayer for my sweet boy.

Mother's Day

"Anything, any loss of sleep, any loss of ease, was worth the sweet, and too, too brief time of holding little ones until they burst out of your arms and into the world." --Rafael Yglesias in Only Children

Last year on Mother's Day, I wrote a post honoring my mom; this year I want to honor my kids. As any parent will attest, having children changes you forever. But what I've been realizing lately is that having kids keeps changing you. Like most children, I learned a lot from my parents as I was growing up; much of who I am was shaped by who they were.  It wasn't until I had kids of my own that I realized the current runs both ways--children shape parents just as much as parents shape children.  When our kids are young, we teach them how the world works.  We share our favorite foods, places, and hobbies with them.  We try our best to help them develop good manners, strong faith, and healthy habits. But then, somewhere around the time our kids hit middle school, the balance shifts and we start learning from them.  As their worlds expand, so does ours. They start to share their favorite music and movies with us; we follow their team buses to places we've never been before; we learn about backpacking, guild auditions, and cross-country running. When they get to high school, our kids bring the world to us--they show us pictures and tell us stories of their trips to France, Italy, Greece, Puerto Rico, and Australia.  They help us see and feel and understand things we never even imagined.  Then they go off to college, and they begin to live the lives we tried to prepare them for as they were growing up in our homes. When they come home on breaks, we are surprised by the changes: the new maturity, outlooks, attitudes. In some ways, they are the children they've always been, but in other ways, they are young adults who feel more like friends.  All of a sudden we realize they are showing us how the world works (especially the world of technology!). We admire and learn from their generosity, their fearlessness, their stamina and self-discipline. They remind us that it's important to have fun, to take risks, and to dream big.  On this Mother's Day weekend, I want to thank my kids--not just for all the breakfasts in bed and Mother's Day gifts over the years, but for the many ways they've changed me, and for all the things I continue to learn from them.

"I would like them to be the happy end of my story."
--Margaret Atwood

The Art of Ironing

I have this memory of lying on the floor near or even part way under the ironing board on afternoons when my mom was ironing.  She was watching Guiding Light, and I was playing with my Pepper dolls.  The air was filled with the scent of clean, hot cotton, and although the TV was on, I mostly remember the thump of the iron on the ironing board and the hiss of the water from the sprinkler bottle dissolving into steam as it hit the surface of my mom's trusty iron.  Occasionally, a freshly ironed sleeve would brush against my cheek as my mom shifted the shirt she was working on.  We didn't talk, at least not that I remember, but it was calm and peaceful there under the ironing board.  With a family of six, in the days when permanent press fabrics were just beginning to hit the market, my mom had a lot of ironing to do.  I remember she used to keep a plastic bag full of damp clothes in the bottom of our fridge between washing days and ironing days, and I loved watching as piece by piece that mound of crinkled up cotton was transformed.  After an hour or two, there were pants and shirts with sharp creases hanging on door knobs and neat stacks of crisp pillowcases, handkerchiefs, and napkins on the couch.  Although my mom probably had a hundred things to do when she finished, she never seemed to be in a hurry when she ironed.  As with so many things, she took her time and did it right.  I think about that as I hurry through my days, running an iron over the skirt I'm about to put on, quickly pressing away the worst of the wrinkles.  During the years raising three kids and working full time, I got into the habit of rushing through housekeeping chores, giving them "a lick and promise, " as my mom would say.  As a matter of fact, it wasn't just housekeeping chores that I hurried through, I got into the habit of rushing through life.  I doubt I will ever have the patience or desire to become an expert in the art of ironing like my mom is, but I would like to start living more deliberately.  I want to take my time and do things right.  I want calm and peaceful afternoons even in the midst of a busy life.

Growing Up

Seventeen years ago we were in Florida for spring break, and our youngest child was about to turn four.  But instead of getting ready for a sunny Florida birthday, we found ourselves in the midst of an emotional storm. The problem? Em didn't want to celebrate her birthday. She didn't want a cake, she didn't want presents, and most of all, she didn't want to be four.  One of the books she liked at the time was I Like to Be Little by Charlotte Zolotow, which begins,

"Once there was a little girl.
"What do you want to be when you grow up? her mother asked.
"I just want to stay little right now," she said.
"Why?" said her mother. "It's nice to be grown up. Why do you want to be little?"
"Because I am," said the little girl, "and because when you are little you can do things you can't when you grow up."

In the rest of the book the little girl describes things she can do because she's little that grown-ups don't do (skipping when she's glad, making a house under the dining room table, going barefoot in summertime, eating snow when it first falls). Em had taken all that to heart and had decided she didn't want to get any older.  Another one of her favorite books at the time was The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister, and what finally calmed the storm and eased Em through the transition from three to four was the promise of a rainbow fish birthday cake. Before long she discovered being older meant she could do more tricks on the playground and keep up better with her brothers, and she sailed through the rest of being four, and five, and six . . . and really all the way through being nineteen. Last year around this time, there were echoes of that long ago birthday. Whenever I started to mention her upcoming birthday, she stopped me and said, "I don't want to talk about it."  Once again she was struggling with getting older; she wasn't one bit excited about turning twenty and leaving her teen years behind.  There were no tears or tantrums this time, but there was a bit of sadness in her eyes as her birthday approached.  So now here we are on the eve of her twenty-first birthday; tomorrow my daughter will officially be an adult, a grown-up. I don't really know how she's feeling about it; she's been through a tough week, so her mind has been on other things. But I've been watching her over the past year, and I can see that she's ready. What the little girl in the book didn't yet know is that there are a lot of great things waiting for you when you grow up that you can't do when you're little. And I think that even though Em liked being little, she's going to love being grown up.  Happy 21st birthday, Em!

Advice from Alcatraz

In one of my classes, we're reading Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko right now.  The story takes place in 1935 on Alcatraz Island, where Matthew "Moose" Flanagan and his family have recently moved.  Moose's dad has taken a job at the prison, so Moose's sister can attend a special school in nearby San Francisco.  Moose is unhappy about the move and wants to return to his old life in Santa Monica.  Early in the book he is talking to his dad about it and says, "I want to know for certain this is going to work out." Mr. Flanagan's response has been echoing in my head all weekend.  This is what he tells his son: "Nobody knows how things will turn out, that’s why they go ahead and play the game, Moose. You give it your all and sometimes amazing things happen, but it’s hardly ever what you expect.” One thing I've learned in my twenty-six years of parenting is how very true that is. Each one of my kids is different from the other two; what I learned in parenting one of them has helped very little in parenting the other two.  Their paths through life have been as different as they are, even though they came from the same gene pool, grew up in the same house and the same town, and two of them even went to the same college.  In each of their lives, amazing things have happened, but just like Mr. Flanagan said, it has hardly ever been what I was expecting.  This unpredictability keeps you humble as a parent; it also keeps you on your knees if you're a praying person.  You give life your all and encourage your kids to do the same, then you hold on tight, keep your eyes wide open, and wait to see how it all turns out.