In the three-and-a-half years I have (intermittently) been posting to this blog, I have taken many, many opportunities to express my gratitude to and for my beloved wife, our marriage, and the life we have together. And I have told quite a few stories from the lives of our kids – some happy, some sad, some bittersweet. But I have not often expressed my gratitude for them. . .
Molly will often admonish me that, as much as I dote on her, and shower her with affection and appreciation, our kids need those things even more than she does. Early on in our life as parents together, I came across something that said that the most important thing I could do for my kids was to love their mother. And I’m sure there’s a lot of truth to that. And I’m sure that our kids have gotten their share of the benefits of my ardent love for Molly. But they do need my love for them on their own behalf, and I have not always been so expressive of the love that I do, in fact, hold for them in my heart.
But, all this is becoming a pretty rambling preamble; let’s get to it, shall we?
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My beloved children,
At this time of year, we take a day aside to focus on gratitude – those things in our lives for which we are thankful, and perhaps most particularly, those things which we might normally be inclined to take the least bit for granted.
And this year, I want to say that I am grateful for you. I am grateful for each one of you, and for all of you together. Each of you is a particular gift to me – each of you brings your own particular bits of joy into my life. And all of you together make our family uniquely what it is.
I confess that, in my wildest imagination, I never thought I would be the father of eight children. God has given me more than I ever imagined I could handle (of course, it often seems a bit hubristic of me to think that I’m ever actually ‘handling’ anything, but I try my best). I confess, too, that I’ve sometimes felt overwhelmed by the sheer ‘volume’ of our family, and out of that overwhelmed-ness, I’ve not always given you all what you’ve needed from me. And for that, I ask your forgiveness. But I’m getting ahead of myself. . .
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I am grateful that each of you, in your own way, loves the Lord Jesus, and aims to live for Him. Just to have us pray The Hours together brings a layer of richness to our family life that is precious to me. But to see each of you pursuing the Christian life in your own way, and on your own initiative, gives me a deep, nearly-inexpressible joy. My one greatest hope is for all of us to one day be together in Heaven (if ‘days’ can be said to have any meaning in the context of Eternity). . .
I am grateful for the character that I see manifest in your lives, to ever-growing degree. And I hope that it will continue to grow, and bring prosperity to your lives (and you understand, right, that by ‘prosperity’ I mean something much more like ‘blessedness’ than ‘wealth’, don’t you?)
I am grateful for the music that flows from our family. It is a gift from God that, in one way or another, every one of you is musical, and we can take joy in our individual and common musical gifts. I have loved the times, few as they’ve been, where we’ve all been able to sing and play music together. Let’s try to do more of that. . .
I’m grateful that, in the past year or so, we’ve been able to have you all (or at least, most of you) together for Sunday brunch, most weeks. It is good, on a very fundamental, human level, for us to be together like that, and just be a family together.
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For the times I’ve been too aloof, and haven’t given you (any of you individually, or all of you collectively, as the case may be) the attention and affection you’ve needed, I ask your forgiveness. When I was a kid, I tended to live a lot inside my own head; and that’s been a hard habit for me to break. Throughout my fatherly life, God has consistently, and persistently, called me more and more out of myself, and I’m sure that’s one of the reasons he gave me so many of you. Mother Theresa often said that our main task in this life is to learn what it really means to love, and for me, that involves getting out of myself, and giving myself for the sake of others whom God has given me to love. That would be you all. And I am all too aware that I have not always responded to God’s call to me to love you, as freely as I should have. And for that, I ask God’s mercy. And yours.
For the times I’ve been harsh and demanding, I ask your forgiveness. We parents harbor dreams of raising our kids to be better than we are. Which, when you think about it, really isn’t fair. But we do. We – I – want you to be the best you can be, and I’m all too aware of my own failures and weaknesses, and I would hope to keep you from them, as much as I’m able to. But my desire for you to be excellent, even better than I am, is no excuse for failing to love you, and appreciate you for who and what you are. And for that, I ask God’s mercy. And yours.
The Truth is, I love you – each one of you, as a unique instance of the Image of God. I regret that I have not always demonstrated that love to you as I should have; that, in my fallen-ness and weakness, I have fallen short, both of the love that I have owed you as your father, and even of merely giving you the love, meager as it is, that I actually hold in my heart for each of you. But I do love you. And I’ll try to show it to you more effectively, as I go along. (“Deeds, not words” is a worthy motto I saw somewhere; I’ll try to do better at that, too)
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As I said above, I never, in my wildest imagination, thought I would ever be the father of eight children. But I wouldn’t trade being your father for anything – not for any amount of wealth, or power, or prestige. Being your father, I have learned something of what holiness is, as I’ve had to come out of myself (imperfectly as I have managed to do so); and I’ve learned something of what it means to love – and of how really little I have loved up to now. So, for those things I thank you.
And I thank you for making my life rich. I can’t imagine what my life would be like without any one of you; but it would be poorer – that much I know for certain.
So – thank you, one and all. Thank you for making me a father; and, in my case, at least, becoming a father has meant pretty much the same thing as becoming a grown-up – which is to say, a man.
I couldn’t have done it without you.
In love, and gratitude
Your Dad
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Showing posts with label family. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Friday, October 2, 2009
What's In a Name?
A short (OK, maybe not so short) follow-up to the previous post on my reunion with my birth-mother. . .
I am now the same age my birth-mother was when we first met (since she was, for all intents and purposes, 20 when I was born). It is hard for me to describe what it has meant for me to have had her in my life these past 20 years. Just knowing where I came from, and that I didn't fall out of the sky (or, as my friend Lime is wont to say, that I wasn't hatched from an alien egg) counts for a lot. But having the kind of 'intrinsic' connection that flows from shared DNA has been a unique delight, all its own. Besides which, I really like her; she's a neat lady, and I'm glad I can know her.
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One of the things that is on my mind as I ponder this anniversary is names. We all have one (heck, most of us these days have three of 'em, or more), and, in whatever odd and mysterious way, it identifies us uniquely. Parents give a lot of thought to naming their children, and the vast majority of those children accept the name their parents gave them as somehow intrinsic to their own identity. Having a name - being given a name - seems to signify our personhood (or somesuch hi-falutin' stuff).
In my life, I have had three names. Or maybe I should say, I've had three sets of names. The first was the name I was born with. A first name, a middle name, and a last name. Oddly enough, my first name has been one of the very few constants, that have inhered to my life over the full extent of it; there's a story connected with that, but I don't want to get ahead of myself. My birth-mother says that she gave me that name because it seemed a strong name to her (the 'Names' section in the back of our dictionary makes associations with mountains and rocks; FWIW), but beyond that, it had no particular significance; it wasn't a family name, or anything like that. Just a strong-sounding one, at least to her young ears at the time. My middle-birth-name was the same as her brother's (my uncle's) middle name. And my birth-surname was the same as hers. Which fact would come in very handy when I undertook to search for her.
When I was a child, I came across a baby book that one of my foster mothers kept for me (quite an unusual thing for an adopted child to have). In it, I was identified by my first and middle birth names, which was a little confusing to me, since, at the time I was seeing it, that wasn't my name. The first name was familiar, but I didn't know what to make of the other one. For many years, I thought that it was my birth-surname (it was one of those names that could have been either a first/middle, or a surname).
My adoption wasn't final until sometime after my first birthday, as attested by the date on the adoption order. I think my birth-mother was a little reluctant to once-and-for-all sign the papers relinquishing her rights to me. My adoptive parents may have had me as their foster son for a short time before the adoption was final, but that was when it all became official. Since I was a year old, they reasoned that they should leave me with my original first name, since I was, by that time, well used to being called by it (and all the moreso, if, as I believe, they had already had me in their home for a while, and had called me by that name themselves).
They gave me a new middle name, after a famous Supreme Court Justice (why my parents were so enamored of that particular Supreme Court Justice, I have no idea). I never particularly liked my middle name (and, in the fullness of time, once I learned a little about him, I wasn't terribly happy to be named after that particular Supreme Court Justice, either). Although I did get some amusement from people trying to guess my middle name from knowing the initial (no one ever did). And of course, I got a new surname. A new family name, signifying the new family that I was being brought into.
And the family identity that was signified by that name has come to be precious to me. 'Jones' (of course, that's not really my name, but for our purposes here, pretend that it is, OK?) is associated, in my mind, and in my psyche more broadly, with a whole set of 'family' things - my dad, most especially; his dad, my grandfather; my grandpa's farm, where we went for all the holidays when I was a kid, and which had my grandpa's name prominently displayed on the front of the barn; my brothers and sisters, and my cousins from my dad's two brothers, and the fact that everyone knew we were connected to each other because we all shared the same last name; and so on, etc, etc. Even when I went away to college, I went (almost in spite of myself) to the same school my dad had gone to (and his brother, my uncle), and I was well aware that I was not the first person named 'Jones' to have walked those hallowed halls.
And such was my name, through all of my living memory, and I had no reason, nor desire, to think that it would ever be otherwise. . .
Until I met my birth-mother. When I was first starting to think about searching for her, I spoke with my parents, to try to get a 'read' on where they'd be at if I decided to do such a thing. And, in the course of the conversation, my mom (my 'stepmother', though I've never called her that) produced a torn scrap of paper with three names on it. The first two, I recognized from the baby book. The third, the last name, was completely new to me. She went on to tell me that, when she'd married my dad, she'd come across the papers pertaining to my brother's and my adoptions, and had written down our 'original names', just in case, and then hidden that scrap of paper behind a picture that hung on their wall for years. And, as it turned out, within the first year that she and dad were married, our basement flooded, and all of those records were destroyed. So, for more than 20 years, that scrap of paper, hidden behind that picture, was virtually my only connection to my origins.
Anyway, when I asked my dad how he'd be disposed to my searching for my birth-parents, he was fine with it. "If you think it's something you need to do, then by all means, go ahead." And then he added, "Just don't change your name." And I assured him that I had no intention of doing anything like that.
While I was searching for my birth-mother, I made some use of the fact that my dad had a great-grandmother with the same surname as I had been born with (he and my birth-mother turn out to be something like 8th-cousins); I could credibly (and truthfully, if not quite 'the-whole-truth-fully') say that I was researching the family whose name happened to be theirs. I also spoke with a few of her friends and relations (none of whom, by the way, figured out my true intentions), and they duly recounted their conversations with me, when next they spoke to her. And she was extremely intrigued, when she heard the name of this young man who was asking about her - the first name was the same one she'd given her son, years ago (and 'Desmond' - again, not my real name, but we can pretend - is not the most common name in the English-speaking world). Which was most curious, since she assumed that, whoever her son was, his adoptive parents would have given him a different name. Even so, she had inklings that something significant was afoot.
Once we were well and properly reunited, and I had gone to visit her at her house, and it was well-established that we were going to have a long and happy relationship, I came to lament the 'broken connection' between us, and all the years we'd spent apart, and I wanted to have some tangible expression of our connection to each other. My dad having admonished me not to change my name, planted a seed for a possible resolution to my difficulty. I was pretty sure that the 'name' my dad was referring to was our family name. And, since my first name was the same, no matter what, I thought, I could change my middle name to coincide with my birth-surname, which was also my birth-mother's maiden name. That would 'complete the circle', capturing in my name all of my birth and familial connections (and would also shed me of a middle name that I had never liked). (And besides, I've always thought those 'mother's-maiden-name' middle names sounded classy).
When I checked my hunch with my dad, he agreed that it was the family name he was concerned about, and he didn't attach all that much significance to the middle name he'd assigned me, either (beyond the fact that he had, in point of fact, assigned it to me; but he didn't regard that particular assignation as binding). And so, in 1990, just before my 34th birthday (and just before my birth-mother's first visit to our house), I went to court and legally changed my name, so that now, my birth-family-name is my middle name, to go between the only first name I've ever had, and the name of the family I was raised in, and nurtured, the family whose name I've borne for longer than I can remember.
And it all just seems to fit. My whole life, and all of my circumstances, are accounted for in my name. And it seems very good.
I am now the same age my birth-mother was when we first met (since she was, for all intents and purposes, 20 when I was born). It is hard for me to describe what it has meant for me to have had her in my life these past 20 years. Just knowing where I came from, and that I didn't fall out of the sky (or, as my friend Lime is wont to say, that I wasn't hatched from an alien egg) counts for a lot. But having the kind of 'intrinsic' connection that flows from shared DNA has been a unique delight, all its own. Besides which, I really like her; she's a neat lady, and I'm glad I can know her.
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One of the things that is on my mind as I ponder this anniversary is names. We all have one (heck, most of us these days have three of 'em, or more), and, in whatever odd and mysterious way, it identifies us uniquely. Parents give a lot of thought to naming their children, and the vast majority of those children accept the name their parents gave them as somehow intrinsic to their own identity. Having a name - being given a name - seems to signify our personhood (or somesuch hi-falutin' stuff).
In my life, I have had three names. Or maybe I should say, I've had three sets of names. The first was the name I was born with. A first name, a middle name, and a last name. Oddly enough, my first name has been one of the very few constants, that have inhered to my life over the full extent of it; there's a story connected with that, but I don't want to get ahead of myself. My birth-mother says that she gave me that name because it seemed a strong name to her (the 'Names' section in the back of our dictionary makes associations with mountains and rocks; FWIW), but beyond that, it had no particular significance; it wasn't a family name, or anything like that. Just a strong-sounding one, at least to her young ears at the time. My middle-birth-name was the same as her brother's (my uncle's) middle name. And my birth-surname was the same as hers. Which fact would come in very handy when I undertook to search for her.
When I was a child, I came across a baby book that one of my foster mothers kept for me (quite an unusual thing for an adopted child to have). In it, I was identified by my first and middle birth names, which was a little confusing to me, since, at the time I was seeing it, that wasn't my name. The first name was familiar, but I didn't know what to make of the other one. For many years, I thought that it was my birth-surname (it was one of those names that could have been either a first/middle, or a surname).
My adoption wasn't final until sometime after my first birthday, as attested by the date on the adoption order. I think my birth-mother was a little reluctant to once-and-for-all sign the papers relinquishing her rights to me. My adoptive parents may have had me as their foster son for a short time before the adoption was final, but that was when it all became official. Since I was a year old, they reasoned that they should leave me with my original first name, since I was, by that time, well used to being called by it (and all the moreso, if, as I believe, they had already had me in their home for a while, and had called me by that name themselves).
They gave me a new middle name, after a famous Supreme Court Justice (why my parents were so enamored of that particular Supreme Court Justice, I have no idea). I never particularly liked my middle name (and, in the fullness of time, once I learned a little about him, I wasn't terribly happy to be named after that particular Supreme Court Justice, either). Although I did get some amusement from people trying to guess my middle name from knowing the initial (no one ever did). And of course, I got a new surname. A new family name, signifying the new family that I was being brought into.
And the family identity that was signified by that name has come to be precious to me. 'Jones' (of course, that's not really my name, but for our purposes here, pretend that it is, OK?) is associated, in my mind, and in my psyche more broadly, with a whole set of 'family' things - my dad, most especially; his dad, my grandfather; my grandpa's farm, where we went for all the holidays when I was a kid, and which had my grandpa's name prominently displayed on the front of the barn; my brothers and sisters, and my cousins from my dad's two brothers, and the fact that everyone knew we were connected to each other because we all shared the same last name; and so on, etc, etc. Even when I went away to college, I went (almost in spite of myself) to the same school my dad had gone to (and his brother, my uncle), and I was well aware that I was not the first person named 'Jones' to have walked those hallowed halls.
And such was my name, through all of my living memory, and I had no reason, nor desire, to think that it would ever be otherwise. . .
Until I met my birth-mother. When I was first starting to think about searching for her, I spoke with my parents, to try to get a 'read' on where they'd be at if I decided to do such a thing. And, in the course of the conversation, my mom (my 'stepmother', though I've never called her that) produced a torn scrap of paper with three names on it. The first two, I recognized from the baby book. The third, the last name, was completely new to me. She went on to tell me that, when she'd married my dad, she'd come across the papers pertaining to my brother's and my adoptions, and had written down our 'original names', just in case, and then hidden that scrap of paper behind a picture that hung on their wall for years. And, as it turned out, within the first year that she and dad were married, our basement flooded, and all of those records were destroyed. So, for more than 20 years, that scrap of paper, hidden behind that picture, was virtually my only connection to my origins.
Anyway, when I asked my dad how he'd be disposed to my searching for my birth-parents, he was fine with it. "If you think it's something you need to do, then by all means, go ahead." And then he added, "Just don't change your name." And I assured him that I had no intention of doing anything like that.
While I was searching for my birth-mother, I made some use of the fact that my dad had a great-grandmother with the same surname as I had been born with (he and my birth-mother turn out to be something like 8th-cousins); I could credibly (and truthfully, if not quite 'the-whole-truth-fully') say that I was researching the family whose name happened to be theirs. I also spoke with a few of her friends and relations (none of whom, by the way, figured out my true intentions), and they duly recounted their conversations with me, when next they spoke to her. And she was extremely intrigued, when she heard the name of this young man who was asking about her - the first name was the same one she'd given her son, years ago (and 'Desmond' - again, not my real name, but we can pretend - is not the most common name in the English-speaking world). Which was most curious, since she assumed that, whoever her son was, his adoptive parents would have given him a different name. Even so, she had inklings that something significant was afoot.
Once we were well and properly reunited, and I had gone to visit her at her house, and it was well-established that we were going to have a long and happy relationship, I came to lament the 'broken connection' between us, and all the years we'd spent apart, and I wanted to have some tangible expression of our connection to each other. My dad having admonished me not to change my name, planted a seed for a possible resolution to my difficulty. I was pretty sure that the 'name' my dad was referring to was our family name. And, since my first name was the same, no matter what, I thought, I could change my middle name to coincide with my birth-surname, which was also my birth-mother's maiden name. That would 'complete the circle', capturing in my name all of my birth and familial connections (and would also shed me of a middle name that I had never liked). (And besides, I've always thought those 'mother's-maiden-name' middle names sounded classy).
When I checked my hunch with my dad, he agreed that it was the family name he was concerned about, and he didn't attach all that much significance to the middle name he'd assigned me, either (beyond the fact that he had, in point of fact, assigned it to me; but he didn't regard that particular assignation as binding). And so, in 1990, just before my 34th birthday (and just before my birth-mother's first visit to our house), I went to court and legally changed my name, so that now, my birth-family-name is my middle name, to go between the only first name I've ever had, and the name of the family I was raised in, and nurtured, the family whose name I've borne for longer than I can remember.
And it all just seems to fit. My whole life, and all of my circumstances, are accounted for in my name. And it seems very good.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Life Goes On. . .
It's been awhile since I gave a general update on the Jones kids, and now seems an opportune time to send out another one. . .
1F has been making steady progress ('steadier' at some times than others, but overall, the trends are all positive). She's been back in school for the past couple years, getting good grades, and slowly getting her head ramped back up into 'Academic Mode'. This semester, she's taking two classes, so she might actually finish her degree before she's 40. Her choices in men have also trended upward, although not quite to the level that Molly and I might have hoped for, just yet. Her last beau was a decent-enough guy, and treated her like a queen; he's also a 40-something divorcee who doesn't have his driver's license just at the moment (and you can read between the lines on that). Mostly, Molly and I would like to see 1F develop a stronger sense of her own self, apart from what any man thinks of her at the moment. She just recently moved into a house of single 20-something women from our community (including her sister), which is probably a good move for her. . .
2F is doing really well. Since she got back from Detroit, she's been working in the campus outreach that our community runs over at Mega-State U, and really enjoying it. She enjoys working with the college kids, and she really enjoys her friendships with the other staff. I know she'd like to get married at some point (there's the small matter of getting a suitable fellow to actually 'court' her, but, you know, all in good time), and Molly and I would like to see her finish her degree (just, you know, for the sake of having that done, and in her pocket). But on the whole, she just seems really happy right now.
3M is still pretty much scuffling. He has the sense that he really could, and should, be doing better than he is, but his own lack of self-confidence keeps him from aiming higher, a lot of the time (some low-grade 'mental health' issues haven't helped in that regard). He's been living with his girlfriend for the past year, which we're not very happy about. But she's a nice enough young woman, and takes good care of him. The longer they're together, though, the more it seems like they're both sorta feeding each other's 'issues'.
4M is newly off to college. Well, not actually 'off' anywhere; he's going to the local community college (on a full-tuition scholarship that will feed him into Mega-State U, if he keeps his grades up), and living in the basement apartment at home (when we bought the house nine years ago, that was one of the nice attractions of the house - a place where our college kids could be at home, but still have 'a place of their own'). The transition is the occasion for some anxiety on his part - he senses that he'll have to knuckle down on his schoolwork more that he ever had to in high school. But that's an entirely appropriate, and salutary, realization for him to arrive at. . .
The hits just seem to keep coming for 5M. He was promoted to the varsity football team in the middle of last season, and ended the season as a starting linebacker. So he was eagerly looking forward to this fall's season. But in one of the first practices back in August, he stepped in a hole, and ended up requiring knee surgery (I mean, come on - it would be one thing if he'd even been hit; but stepping in a hole? sheesh), which means football will have to wait for his senior year. Poor kid. But, he's mainly taking a pretty upbeat approach to it; he took an after-school job (since, what the heck, he doesn't have football practice), and is enjoying having money in his pocket. Still just a great kid. I hope he can maintain that when the world is buffeting him full-strength about the head and shoulders. . .
6F is a high-school freshman (freshwoman?) this year. And that is freaking me out, just a little. She has always been my 'Little Peanut', and getting my head around the notion of her as a high-school student has been quite a stretch. She seems to be doing OK, choosing good friends, and all that, although her tendency to be absent-minded and a little air-headed ends up causing her parents more heartburn than they'd hoped for. She's also developing a first-rate, 'Princess-level' case of teenage snottiness. Lord, have mercy. . .
7M is a sixth-grader this year, which means middle school. Lord, have mercy again. He has actually done some significant growing-up in the last year. He's as emotionally intense as he's ever been, but he's learning to do better at controlling himself when his emotions flare. Right at the moment, he's playing four musical intruments - piano, trumpet, recorder, and he's just lately taken up the guitar. When he's bored, or stressed, he'll just kinda rotate through the cycle, from one instrument to the next, and then start over at the beginning.
And 8M is still the youngest. And still a chatterbox. He's growing by leaps and bounds right at the moment. Like his just-older brother, he's showing some signs of brilliance (Molly and I recently took him to a restaurant, and his meal cost $3.99; out of the blue, he said, "If I had two of these, it would be $7.98"; yeef). We'll see where that ends up.
Not much to report on my own behalf, right at the moment; I just passed 1000 miles on my bicycle for the year, last weekend. And, as of this moment, I'm still employed (and being paid!) by HugeMassive Corp., which is no small thing.
And that's the State of the Joneses, more-or-less up to the minute. It's nice to not have so much of the crazy drama and intensity that we had a few years ago. With eight kids (and, for the time being at least, it's still 'only eight'), just normal everyday life is plenty. . .
1F has been making steady progress ('steadier' at some times than others, but overall, the trends are all positive). She's been back in school for the past couple years, getting good grades, and slowly getting her head ramped back up into 'Academic Mode'. This semester, she's taking two classes, so she might actually finish her degree before she's 40. Her choices in men have also trended upward, although not quite to the level that Molly and I might have hoped for, just yet. Her last beau was a decent-enough guy, and treated her like a queen; he's also a 40-something divorcee who doesn't have his driver's license just at the moment (and you can read between the lines on that). Mostly, Molly and I would like to see 1F develop a stronger sense of her own self, apart from what any man thinks of her at the moment. She just recently moved into a house of single 20-something women from our community (including her sister), which is probably a good move for her. . .
2F is doing really well. Since she got back from Detroit, she's been working in the campus outreach that our community runs over at Mega-State U, and really enjoying it. She enjoys working with the college kids, and she really enjoys her friendships with the other staff. I know she'd like to get married at some point (there's the small matter of getting a suitable fellow to actually 'court' her, but, you know, all in good time), and Molly and I would like to see her finish her degree (just, you know, for the sake of having that done, and in her pocket). But on the whole, she just seems really happy right now.
3M is still pretty much scuffling. He has the sense that he really could, and should, be doing better than he is, but his own lack of self-confidence keeps him from aiming higher, a lot of the time (some low-grade 'mental health' issues haven't helped in that regard). He's been living with his girlfriend for the past year, which we're not very happy about. But she's a nice enough young woman, and takes good care of him. The longer they're together, though, the more it seems like they're both sorta feeding each other's 'issues'.
4M is newly off to college. Well, not actually 'off' anywhere; he's going to the local community college (on a full-tuition scholarship that will feed him into Mega-State U, if he keeps his grades up), and living in the basement apartment at home (when we bought the house nine years ago, that was one of the nice attractions of the house - a place where our college kids could be at home, but still have 'a place of their own'). The transition is the occasion for some anxiety on his part - he senses that he'll have to knuckle down on his schoolwork more that he ever had to in high school. But that's an entirely appropriate, and salutary, realization for him to arrive at. . .
The hits just seem to keep coming for 5M. He was promoted to the varsity football team in the middle of last season, and ended the season as a starting linebacker. So he was eagerly looking forward to this fall's season. But in one of the first practices back in August, he stepped in a hole, and ended up requiring knee surgery (I mean, come on - it would be one thing if he'd even been hit; but stepping in a hole? sheesh), which means football will have to wait for his senior year. Poor kid. But, he's mainly taking a pretty upbeat approach to it; he took an after-school job (since, what the heck, he doesn't have football practice), and is enjoying having money in his pocket. Still just a great kid. I hope he can maintain that when the world is buffeting him full-strength about the head and shoulders. . .
6F is a high-school freshman (freshwoman?) this year. And that is freaking me out, just a little. She has always been my 'Little Peanut', and getting my head around the notion of her as a high-school student has been quite a stretch. She seems to be doing OK, choosing good friends, and all that, although her tendency to be absent-minded and a little air-headed ends up causing her parents more heartburn than they'd hoped for. She's also developing a first-rate, 'Princess-level' case of teenage snottiness. Lord, have mercy. . .
7M is a sixth-grader this year, which means middle school. Lord, have mercy again. He has actually done some significant growing-up in the last year. He's as emotionally intense as he's ever been, but he's learning to do better at controlling himself when his emotions flare. Right at the moment, he's playing four musical intruments - piano, trumpet, recorder, and he's just lately taken up the guitar. When he's bored, or stressed, he'll just kinda rotate through the cycle, from one instrument to the next, and then start over at the beginning.
And 8M is still the youngest. And still a chatterbox. He's growing by leaps and bounds right at the moment. Like his just-older brother, he's showing some signs of brilliance (Molly and I recently took him to a restaurant, and his meal cost $3.99; out of the blue, he said, "If I had two of these, it would be $7.98"; yeef). We'll see where that ends up.
Not much to report on my own behalf, right at the moment; I just passed 1000 miles on my bicycle for the year, last weekend. And, as of this moment, I'm still employed (and being paid!) by HugeMassive Corp., which is no small thing.
And that's the State of the Joneses, more-or-less up to the minute. It's nice to not have so much of the crazy drama and intensity that we had a few years ago. With eight kids (and, for the time being at least, it's still 'only eight'), just normal everyday life is plenty. . .
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
So Happy Together. . .
So Molly and the kids (5M and younger) and I were on vacation last week. Did you miss us? (OK, strike that question; I learned long ago not to ask questions I don't want to know the answers to). We went to the same cabin Up North that Molly and I stayed at for our 25th Anniversary Second Honeymoon. It was our first family vacation in three years, and only our second since 1996, so it was well-appreciated, and probably more than a little overdue.
Our being there actually had a certain ironic twist to it. The cabin's owner, who is a friend of ours, offered our family the gift of his cabin to honor 4M, because 4M had, over the years, done quite a few odd jobs for him, including a few weekends 'opening up' and 'closing down' the cabin at the beginning and end of the season. And also to honor 4M for his recent high-school graduation, with high honors. And of course, we were duly grateful. But last week was the only one which would work for our family's schedule, and also the owner's. And last week, 4M was on his mission trip to the Dominican Republic. So 4M didn't actually participate in our friend's gift to our family in his honor. Such is life, I guess. . .
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Weather-wise, I suppose you could say that we were a bit star-crossed. Except for the Sunday at the beginning of our week, and the Saturday we returned home, the weather would best be described as crappy. It rained all day Monday, and the rest of the week was cool and gray and overcast, and threatening rain. But it really didn't keep us from much. To the extent that it 'forced us inside', we turned it into family game-time, which wound up being really happy for us; we really had some nice fun together (not unmixed with copious quantities of bickering, but I'm aiming at accentuating the positive here). 5M turns out to be a pretty darned good Scrabble player, and 7M won the weekly Yahtzee series (though I gotta tell ya, it'll be a while before I'll be ready to play Scrabble or Yahtzee again. . .) And we threw in a few card games (mostly Hearts), just for variety. . .
Our cabin was not far from the Cross in the Woods, a sweet little Catholic shrine tucked away in the northwoods of Michigan. We went to Mass there on Sunday, and a couple other times during the week. There is also a small 'side shrine' to the Holy Family, which touches a special place in my heart, and Molly's. The Holy Family sculpture there is just a lovely piece of artwork, and evocative of all manner of familial grace and love, most especially of a husband/father's care for his wife and children, so I bought a miniature copy of it to keep on our dinner table back home. Just to remind us all of the love that's supposed to be at the heart of our family (and when family life gets, um, intense, we just ask Mary and Joseph to pray for us, that our family can be holy like theirs was). At least, that's the theory. . .
We also drove to the Upper Peninsula (in part because 8M had never crossed the Mackinac Bridge) (but the UP is just a cool place to visit, in its own right). About 15 miles west of the bridge, there's a spot where US-2 runs right along a beautiful sandy Lake Michigan beach for a couple miles, so we stopped there. I just waded in the surf, but all four of the kids couldn't wait to dunk themselves in the big lake. The air temperature might have been 65F; the water temperature might have been about the same. It was one of those days where the water initially feels icy-cold as it touches your toes, but five minutes later, it's perfectly comfortable (or maybe you just get numb; I don't know). Anyway, we spent about an hour there at the roadside beach, the kids body-surfing and splashing in the waves, and me wishing I'd had the foresight to bring my swimsuit along (*sigh*). . .
Another day, we took a short drive to Ocqueoc Falls (that's pronounced OCKY-ock, for you non-locals), which is the only significant waterfall in the Lower Peninsula, and really, one of the hidden treasures of our state. There are three significant sections of the falls, over roughly a half-mile of river, and each falls has a little pool dammed off below it, making for nice little 'swimming holes', of which our kids were only too happy to avail themselves, which included jumping off the falls (all of maybe four feet) into the pool below (I'm actually a little surprised that some lawyer hasn't told Presque Isle (presk EEL) County to tear out the stone dams, and forbid swimming near the falls; which is part of what makes it a hidden treasure). We had actually visited Ocqueoc Falls on our last family vacation, but it had been 90F that day, and the, uh, bracingly cool water of the Ocqueoc River had been most refreshing. On a 70F cloudy day, however, it was mostly just cold (at least to my aging bones; the kids were just fine).
I took my bike with me, and got in a couple rides of 30-or-so miles. And I want to tell you, Up North Michigan has some hills the likes of which we simply don't have around OurTown. I got down into gears that are mostly for show on my usual routes, but Up North, they were eminently practical. I hadn't seen hills like that since the last time I rode DALMAC (well, there was that one on Mackinac Island). Nice to know I can still climb 'em, though. . .
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On a more 'personal' level, 6F 'borrowed' Molly's cell phone, and learned how to send text messages to her friends back in OurTown. Molly bought some kind of Giant Super-Saver pack of Twizzlers for the kids, and what they all remember is that 5M got a chunk of Twizzler stuck in his throat, and ended up puking to get it dislodged. And 8M cut his foot most bloodily on a zebra-mussel shell.
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So, all in all, we wish the weather had been nicer (and the brilliantly sunny departure Saturday just seemed cruel), but we had a good time. Our family needed the time together, away from our 'normal routine'. We're in a bit of a 'transition time' right at the moment - 4M is heading off to college in the fall, and even though he'll be living at home with us, he's transitioning out of the family, and into a more independent life. So 5M is transitioning into the role of 'oldest' among the kids still 'fully at home'. 6F is transitioning into 'High School Girl' (which Molly and I are still trying to wrap our minds around), and we're also realizing that our 'little kids' are 11 and 7. So it's good to sort-of 'reset the levels' for the updated family configuration.
But mostly, it's good for us to be together, learning how to love one another better. Our kids can bicker like world champions (I blame Molly and me for being emotionally high-pitched in the first place; so our poor kids get both our DNA and our less-than-fully-helpful example), but they also love each other, and they're getting better at asking for and giving each other forgiveness (now if they could only start treating each other so as not to require asking forgiveness in the first place. . .). When you get to the bottom of it, family vacations are all about the us-ness of Us. We know each other better than anyone else knows any of us, and it's just nice (mostly) to just be Us together. . .
Our being there actually had a certain ironic twist to it. The cabin's owner, who is a friend of ours, offered our family the gift of his cabin to honor 4M, because 4M had, over the years, done quite a few odd jobs for him, including a few weekends 'opening up' and 'closing down' the cabin at the beginning and end of the season. And also to honor 4M for his recent high-school graduation, with high honors. And of course, we were duly grateful. But last week was the only one which would work for our family's schedule, and also the owner's. And last week, 4M was on his mission trip to the Dominican Republic. So 4M didn't actually participate in our friend's gift to our family in his honor. Such is life, I guess. . .
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Weather-wise, I suppose you could say that we were a bit star-crossed. Except for the Sunday at the beginning of our week, and the Saturday we returned home, the weather would best be described as crappy. It rained all day Monday, and the rest of the week was cool and gray and overcast, and threatening rain. But it really didn't keep us from much. To the extent that it 'forced us inside', we turned it into family game-time, which wound up being really happy for us; we really had some nice fun together (not unmixed with copious quantities of bickering, but I'm aiming at accentuating the positive here). 5M turns out to be a pretty darned good Scrabble player, and 7M won the weekly Yahtzee series (though I gotta tell ya, it'll be a while before I'll be ready to play Scrabble or Yahtzee again. . .) And we threw in a few card games (mostly Hearts), just for variety. . .
Our cabin was not far from the Cross in the Woods, a sweet little Catholic shrine tucked away in the northwoods of Michigan. We went to Mass there on Sunday, and a couple other times during the week. There is also a small 'side shrine' to the Holy Family, which touches a special place in my heart, and Molly's. The Holy Family sculpture there is just a lovely piece of artwork, and evocative of all manner of familial grace and love, most especially of a husband/father's care for his wife and children, so I bought a miniature copy of it to keep on our dinner table back home. Just to remind us all of the love that's supposed to be at the heart of our family (and when family life gets, um, intense, we just ask Mary and Joseph to pray for us, that our family can be holy like theirs was). At least, that's the theory. . .
We also drove to the Upper Peninsula (in part because 8M had never crossed the Mackinac Bridge) (but the UP is just a cool place to visit, in its own right). About 15 miles west of the bridge, there's a spot where US-2 runs right along a beautiful sandy Lake Michigan beach for a couple miles, so we stopped there. I just waded in the surf, but all four of the kids couldn't wait to dunk themselves in the big lake. The air temperature might have been 65F; the water temperature might have been about the same. It was one of those days where the water initially feels icy-cold as it touches your toes, but five minutes later, it's perfectly comfortable (or maybe you just get numb; I don't know). Anyway, we spent about an hour there at the roadside beach, the kids body-surfing and splashing in the waves, and me wishing I'd had the foresight to bring my swimsuit along (*sigh*). . .
Another day, we took a short drive to Ocqueoc Falls (that's pronounced OCKY-ock, for you non-locals), which is the only significant waterfall in the Lower Peninsula, and really, one of the hidden treasures of our state. There are three significant sections of the falls, over roughly a half-mile of river, and each falls has a little pool dammed off below it, making for nice little 'swimming holes', of which our kids were only too happy to avail themselves, which included jumping off the falls (all of maybe four feet) into the pool below (I'm actually a little surprised that some lawyer hasn't told Presque Isle (presk EEL) County to tear out the stone dams, and forbid swimming near the falls; which is part of what makes it a hidden treasure). We had actually visited Ocqueoc Falls on our last family vacation, but it had been 90F that day, and the, uh, bracingly cool water of the Ocqueoc River had been most refreshing. On a 70F cloudy day, however, it was mostly just cold (at least to my aging bones; the kids were just fine).
I took my bike with me, and got in a couple rides of 30-or-so miles. And I want to tell you, Up North Michigan has some hills the likes of which we simply don't have around OurTown. I got down into gears that are mostly for show on my usual routes, but Up North, they were eminently practical. I hadn't seen hills like that since the last time I rode DALMAC (well, there was that one on Mackinac Island). Nice to know I can still climb 'em, though. . .
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On a more 'personal' level, 6F 'borrowed' Molly's cell phone, and learned how to send text messages to her friends back in OurTown. Molly bought some kind of Giant Super-Saver pack of Twizzlers for the kids, and what they all remember is that 5M got a chunk of Twizzler stuck in his throat, and ended up puking to get it dislodged. And 8M cut his foot most bloodily on a zebra-mussel shell.
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So, all in all, we wish the weather had been nicer (and the brilliantly sunny departure Saturday just seemed cruel), but we had a good time. Our family needed the time together, away from our 'normal routine'. We're in a bit of a 'transition time' right at the moment - 4M is heading off to college in the fall, and even though he'll be living at home with us, he's transitioning out of the family, and into a more independent life. So 5M is transitioning into the role of 'oldest' among the kids still 'fully at home'. 6F is transitioning into 'High School Girl' (which Molly and I are still trying to wrap our minds around), and we're also realizing that our 'little kids' are 11 and 7. So it's good to sort-of 'reset the levels' for the updated family configuration.
But mostly, it's good for us to be together, learning how to love one another better. Our kids can bicker like world champions (I blame Molly and me for being emotionally high-pitched in the first place; so our poor kids get both our DNA and our less-than-fully-helpful example), but they also love each other, and they're getting better at asking for and giving each other forgiveness (now if they could only start treating each other so as not to require asking forgiveness in the first place. . .). When you get to the bottom of it, family vacations are all about the us-ness of Us. We know each other better than anyone else knows any of us, and it's just nice (mostly) to just be Us together. . .
Friday, March 27, 2009
16 Centuries Ahead of His Time?
Molly and I have this quote from St. John Chrysostom framed, and sitting on our dresser:
“As if she were gold receiving purest gold, the woman receives the man’s seed with rich pleasure, and within her it is nourished, cherished, and refined. It is mingled with her own substance and she then returns it as a child! The child is a bridge connecting father to mother, so the three become one flesh. . . And here the bridge is formed from the substance of each!”
- from Homily XII on Colossians
The early Church fathers have a reputation, not entirely undeserved, for being a little uptight when it comes to sexual matters (Origen and St. Augustine, for two large examples). But God bless St. John. Here he describes sex in terms any married couple could appreciate – ‘the woman receives the man’s seed with rich pleasure. . .’ Yeah, that fits with our experience. And his description of the child as the ‘one flesh’ of husband and wife has always resonated with me. He carries strong echoes (or, more truly, foreshadowings) of the Theology of the Body, 16 centuries before the fact.
So, thank God for St. John Chrysostom. And I would heartily recommend to any of my blog-friends the rich little book of his homilies On Marriage and Family Life.
“As if she were gold receiving purest gold, the woman receives the man’s seed with rich pleasure, and within her it is nourished, cherished, and refined. It is mingled with her own substance and she then returns it as a child! The child is a bridge connecting father to mother, so the three become one flesh. . . And here the bridge is formed from the substance of each!”
- from Homily XII on Colossians
The early Church fathers have a reputation, not entirely undeserved, for being a little uptight when it comes to sexual matters (Origen and St. Augustine, for two large examples). But God bless St. John. Here he describes sex in terms any married couple could appreciate – ‘the woman receives the man’s seed with rich pleasure. . .’ Yeah, that fits with our experience. And his description of the child as the ‘one flesh’ of husband and wife has always resonated with me. He carries strong echoes (or, more truly, foreshadowings) of the Theology of the Body, 16 centuries before the fact.
So, thank God for St. John Chrysostom. And I would heartily recommend to any of my blog-friends the rich little book of his homilies On Marriage and Family Life.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Back In the Blog Life Again. . . Sort Of
Well, maybe not quite. Mainly, I just regretted deleting my old blog, and I thought it would be better to have almost a year’s worth of my old blog posts back up, in case anyone would ever want to have a look at them (does that seem incredibly vain?) Plus, a couple times in the past year, I’ve wished I still had my blog, so I could post some thoughts that were burning a hole in my brain at the time (that’s not nearly as painful as it sounds). So, here I am.
I don’t want to get anybody’s hopes up. My intention is not to post very often. If at all. I simply can’t ever go back to ‘full-time’ blogging; I have too many other things going on in my life. I expect I’ll be one of those frustrating bloggers who posts just seldom enough that you want to say ‘the heck with it’, but then a new post appears. But such is life in blog-space. Actually, to be perfectly candid, even as I sit here saying I don’t intend to post much, I have half-a-dozen ideas for new posts floating around in my brain. So, maybe some stuff will trickle out here and there, until the flow of ideas dries up, and then I’ll go dormant for a while again, until something else gets stirred up in my brain.
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Since I’ve been gone for awhile, I should probably take just a moment to bring you all up to speed on what all us Joneses are up to these days, and where we’ve been.
Molly and I, and virtually all of our kids (except 8M) have spent time in counseling over the past year-and-a-half (I talked about it some here). I think it’s been helpful. At least, we’ve got a few more tools for how we relate to each other that, if we remember to use them, help us to defuse a lot of the conflicts that arise in the course of our family life. Molly and I are learning just to be more empathetic with our kids, to just throw an arm around their shoulders, and ‘be there’ for them. Which, over the years, has been our major failing as parents. It isn’t always easy to do, with so many of them. But it’s necessary; and worth the time and effort. And we’re getting better at it. I think.
Molly and I continue to be madly, passionately in love with each other, even after nearly 28 years of marriage. I can’t help it; she’s the most amazing woman in the world, and the hottest 50+ year old any of you will ever meet. . .
1F is steadily getting her life back on track, although not without some struggle. She’s been back in school, taking single classes for the past year, to get herself re-acclimated to the whole ‘school’ thing. Her daughter is now two-and-a-half years old, and cute as a bug. The ‘open’ adoption is still working really well for all parties concerned.
2F has spent the last year doing mission work in Detroit. She has tended to get short shrift here, and in real life, just because her siblings on either side of her have drawn so much attention. And that has left a few scars on her psyche. Under the age of ten, she was probably our most difficult child, but these days, she’s quite a shining star. Once her mission year ends this summer, she’ll come back to finish her schooling and see what life has next for her.
3M is doing much better. Since he graduated from high school, he’s spent a fair bit of time getting educated by The Universe. The first year after high school was especially painful for us to watch. But the past year has been better. He’s held a job, and has mended fences on several of the relationships he’d trashed. And our relationship as father/son is as good as it’s been in a long, long time. There’s still lots of room for him to make some better decisions for his life, but for now, he seems to slowly be absorbing the lessons The Universe is giving him.
4M has had a bit more adversity over the last year than what he’d been used to. He’s still an A-student, star athlete, All-American Boy. But, whereas a year ago, he had colleges knocking on his door to come play football for them, his junior season pretty much ended those prospects. When you play quarterback, you can be a great athlete, but if you make bad decisions under pressure, it doesn’t go so well for you. We’ll see how his senior year goes, but now he knows that he’s much more likely to earn his living at something he learns in the classroom than he is on the football field.
5M has also had more adversity than he’d bargained for, starting in 8th grade, when he was peripherally involved in some trouble at school, for which he was very severely punished (way more severely than the ‘offense’ warranted, in my opinion, but that’s another story for another day). He has also tended to get lost in the swirl surrounding his older siblings, but we’re learning not to do that.
6F has had a difficult transition into teenager-hood. Aside from being the only girl living at home in a sea of testosterone, middle-school social drama and barbarian middle-school boys have made her life more stressful than I wish it was.
7M, our ‘miracle boy’, is still brilliant, still volatile. We started him on piano lessons six months ago, and he’s already run miles down the road with it. Just like 1F used to do when she was younger, he tends to play the piano for stress-relief. And he’s gotten pretty good at it. The bad news is, he feels stressed a lot. We’re getting better at helping him get on top of his emotions, but it isn’t always easy.
8M isn’t a baby anymore, even though he’s every bit the ‘baby of the family’. He was in kindergarten this past year, meaning that, for the first time since before 1F was born, Molly was home alone during the school day. He’s showing signs of being genius-prone like 7M and 3M. We’ll see about that.
And that’s the short version of where we’re at these days. Life is both harder and richer than we’d anticipated. And God is merciful.
I don’t want to get anybody’s hopes up. My intention is not to post very often. If at all. I simply can’t ever go back to ‘full-time’ blogging; I have too many other things going on in my life. I expect I’ll be one of those frustrating bloggers who posts just seldom enough that you want to say ‘the heck with it’, but then a new post appears. But such is life in blog-space. Actually, to be perfectly candid, even as I sit here saying I don’t intend to post much, I have half-a-dozen ideas for new posts floating around in my brain. So, maybe some stuff will trickle out here and there, until the flow of ideas dries up, and then I’ll go dormant for a while again, until something else gets stirred up in my brain.
-------------------------
Since I’ve been gone for awhile, I should probably take just a moment to bring you all up to speed on what all us Joneses are up to these days, and where we’ve been.
Molly and I, and virtually all of our kids (except 8M) have spent time in counseling over the past year-and-a-half (I talked about it some here). I think it’s been helpful. At least, we’ve got a few more tools for how we relate to each other that, if we remember to use them, help us to defuse a lot of the conflicts that arise in the course of our family life. Molly and I are learning just to be more empathetic with our kids, to just throw an arm around their shoulders, and ‘be there’ for them. Which, over the years, has been our major failing as parents. It isn’t always easy to do, with so many of them. But it’s necessary; and worth the time and effort. And we’re getting better at it. I think.
Molly and I continue to be madly, passionately in love with each other, even after nearly 28 years of marriage. I can’t help it; she’s the most amazing woman in the world, and the hottest 50+ year old any of you will ever meet. . .
1F is steadily getting her life back on track, although not without some struggle. She’s been back in school, taking single classes for the past year, to get herself re-acclimated to the whole ‘school’ thing. Her daughter is now two-and-a-half years old, and cute as a bug. The ‘open’ adoption is still working really well for all parties concerned.
2F has spent the last year doing mission work in Detroit. She has tended to get short shrift here, and in real life, just because her siblings on either side of her have drawn so much attention. And that has left a few scars on her psyche. Under the age of ten, she was probably our most difficult child, but these days, she’s quite a shining star. Once her mission year ends this summer, she’ll come back to finish her schooling and see what life has next for her.
3M is doing much better. Since he graduated from high school, he’s spent a fair bit of time getting educated by The Universe. The first year after high school was especially painful for us to watch. But the past year has been better. He’s held a job, and has mended fences on several of the relationships he’d trashed. And our relationship as father/son is as good as it’s been in a long, long time. There’s still lots of room for him to make some better decisions for his life, but for now, he seems to slowly be absorbing the lessons The Universe is giving him.
4M has had a bit more adversity over the last year than what he’d been used to. He’s still an A-student, star athlete, All-American Boy. But, whereas a year ago, he had colleges knocking on his door to come play football for them, his junior season pretty much ended those prospects. When you play quarterback, you can be a great athlete, but if you make bad decisions under pressure, it doesn’t go so well for you. We’ll see how his senior year goes, but now he knows that he’s much more likely to earn his living at something he learns in the classroom than he is on the football field.
5M has also had more adversity than he’d bargained for, starting in 8th grade, when he was peripherally involved in some trouble at school, for which he was very severely punished (way more severely than the ‘offense’ warranted, in my opinion, but that’s another story for another day). He has also tended to get lost in the swirl surrounding his older siblings, but we’re learning not to do that.
6F has had a difficult transition into teenager-hood. Aside from being the only girl living at home in a sea of testosterone, middle-school social drama and barbarian middle-school boys have made her life more stressful than I wish it was.
7M, our ‘miracle boy’, is still brilliant, still volatile. We started him on piano lessons six months ago, and he’s already run miles down the road with it. Just like 1F used to do when she was younger, he tends to play the piano for stress-relief. And he’s gotten pretty good at it. The bad news is, he feels stressed a lot. We’re getting better at helping him get on top of his emotions, but it isn’t always easy.
8M isn’t a baby anymore, even though he’s every bit the ‘baby of the family’. He was in kindergarten this past year, meaning that, for the first time since before 1F was born, Molly was home alone during the school day. He’s showing signs of being genius-prone like 7M and 3M. We’ll see about that.
And that’s the short version of where we’re at these days. Life is both harder and richer than we’d anticipated. And God is merciful.
Monday, April 2, 2007
A Few Questions From a Friend
One of my blog-friends asked me a few questions, which I believe will help you all understand me better (and I'm just vain enough to think that you would want to). So, forthwith. . .
- What moved you to embrace Catholicism?
This demands a bit of a complex answer; you would be very kind to bear with me. I’ve posted about it, way back when, but perhaps I can expand a bit here.
I suppose it started the first time I went to a Catholic Mass, when I was in high school. My Jesus-freak buddy and I took on a project of visiting as many different kinds of churches as we could find. When we visited the Catholic church in town, I was very surprised by how much scripture was woven into the liturgy (I’d been told that Catholics just didn’t ‘do’ scripture), and how prayerful it was. So, my first impression was, “hey, this is a lot cooler than I expected it to be.”
When I went away to college, I was sort of ‘rootless’ in a church sense. I went to the college-town church of my ‘home denomination’ once, and was quite underwhelmed. I started going to a charismatic prayer meeting, and felt immediately at home. I took up with a young lady, who happened to be Catholic, and she began regularly inviting me to go to mass with her. Which I did, quite a lot, and it mainly reinforced my first impression.
At the same time, I took up an independent study of Church history – I was interested in what had happened to Christianity in the generations immediately following Jesus and the Apostles – how the second generation of Christians received the gospel from the Apostles, and how they, in turn, passed it on to the third – and I wondered how it had gotten from Bible days to my own. I don’t say that such a project would affect everyone the same way it affected me, but I came to see Catholicism (and Orthodoxy) as being in historical continuity with the first Christians, and if I wanted to be in that kind of ‘spiritual continuity’, I had to at least deal with that question.
I undertook to be received into the Catholic Church when I thought that the young lady (GF2, if you recall her) and I would get married, but for various reasons, we broke off our romantic relationship while I was in instruction (we are good friends today, tho). By then, though, I was already thinking of the Catholic Church as my spiritual ‘home’, and I completed my instruction on my own initiative, and was received into the Catholic Church.
Once I was safely Catholic, a few things sort of ‘cemented’ my conversion. Catholic sacramental life turned out to be a good deal richer than I’d anticipated. I recall hearing a Pentecostal preacher talking about a trip he’d taken to Poland, and he drew a fascinating parallel between communion and an altar call – “people standing in line to receive Jesus”. That thought has never left me, and to this day, I will often quietly hum ‘Just As I Am’ in the communion line.
I also discovered what I’ll call the ‘Catholic Intellectual Tradition’ – Thomas Aquinas, John Henry Newman, GK Chesterton, the whole Natural Law tradition – and I was instantly smitten. This was only reinforced when John Paul II became pope. I had never encountered anything quite like it (aside from CS Lewis, I suppose, and to a lesser extent, Francis Schaeffer).
- If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?
I wish I weren’t so selfish. It is altogether too easy for me to go through life thinking about myself and my interests and what I want/need, when Molly and the kids need more of my ‘brain space’. I can do OK where Molly is concerned, especially when I’m feeling horny. But I really need to give more of my thoughts and attention to the kids. It’s altogether too easy for me to retreat into my ‘private world’ and tune them out. And that is not unrelated to the troubles that a couple of them have had. . .
- What is the best and worst thing about having a large family?
I want to say that they’re the same thing – you’re rarely alone. There’s never a dull moment, for sure. It’s very gratifying to see the relationships they have with each other – much as they bicker with each other, as they grow up their relationships really do develop some depth and affection. With eight kids, that’s 28 separate relationships of the kids with each other (45, if you throw Molly and me into the mix). And, as the kids get older, it’s very gratifying to see them cultivating a ‘family identity’ – all that shared experience has started being a ‘bonding’ thing. And, I’ve definitely improved my odds of having grandchildren. . . ;)
But, the bickering can reach truly epic proportions, and sometimes I just want to lock them all in the basement and let them have at each other, and then we’ll just go on with the survivors. I’m also a guy who seems to have a more-than-average felt need for some low-key solitude, and that just doesn’t happen very often. And I won’t even get into the grocery bills. . .
There has been a certain good-news/bad-news aspect when it comes to the troubles we’ve had with 1F and 3M – in the course of dealing with those situations, there are six other kids who get sort of short-changed in the process. But, they can also soften the grief for us, if we’re paying attention. . .
So, there you have it. I'll gladly entertain any follow-up questions any of you might have.
I enjoyed this; I hope you all enjoyed it, too. . .
(23 comments)
- What moved you to embrace Catholicism?
This demands a bit of a complex answer; you would be very kind to bear with me. I’ve posted about it, way back when, but perhaps I can expand a bit here.
I suppose it started the first time I went to a Catholic Mass, when I was in high school. My Jesus-freak buddy and I took on a project of visiting as many different kinds of churches as we could find. When we visited the Catholic church in town, I was very surprised by how much scripture was woven into the liturgy (I’d been told that Catholics just didn’t ‘do’ scripture), and how prayerful it was. So, my first impression was, “hey, this is a lot cooler than I expected it to be.”
When I went away to college, I was sort of ‘rootless’ in a church sense. I went to the college-town church of my ‘home denomination’ once, and was quite underwhelmed. I started going to a charismatic prayer meeting, and felt immediately at home. I took up with a young lady, who happened to be Catholic, and she began regularly inviting me to go to mass with her. Which I did, quite a lot, and it mainly reinforced my first impression.
At the same time, I took up an independent study of Church history – I was interested in what had happened to Christianity in the generations immediately following Jesus and the Apostles – how the second generation of Christians received the gospel from the Apostles, and how they, in turn, passed it on to the third – and I wondered how it had gotten from Bible days to my own. I don’t say that such a project would affect everyone the same way it affected me, but I came to see Catholicism (and Orthodoxy) as being in historical continuity with the first Christians, and if I wanted to be in that kind of ‘spiritual continuity’, I had to at least deal with that question.
I undertook to be received into the Catholic Church when I thought that the young lady (GF2, if you recall her) and I would get married, but for various reasons, we broke off our romantic relationship while I was in instruction (we are good friends today, tho). By then, though, I was already thinking of the Catholic Church as my spiritual ‘home’, and I completed my instruction on my own initiative, and was received into the Catholic Church.
Once I was safely Catholic, a few things sort of ‘cemented’ my conversion. Catholic sacramental life turned out to be a good deal richer than I’d anticipated. I recall hearing a Pentecostal preacher talking about a trip he’d taken to Poland, and he drew a fascinating parallel between communion and an altar call – “people standing in line to receive Jesus”. That thought has never left me, and to this day, I will often quietly hum ‘Just As I Am’ in the communion line.
I also discovered what I’ll call the ‘Catholic Intellectual Tradition’ – Thomas Aquinas, John Henry Newman, GK Chesterton, the whole Natural Law tradition – and I was instantly smitten. This was only reinforced when John Paul II became pope. I had never encountered anything quite like it (aside from CS Lewis, I suppose, and to a lesser extent, Francis Schaeffer).
- If you could change one thing about yourself what would it be?
I wish I weren’t so selfish. It is altogether too easy for me to go through life thinking about myself and my interests and what I want/need, when Molly and the kids need more of my ‘brain space’. I can do OK where Molly is concerned, especially when I’m feeling horny. But I really need to give more of my thoughts and attention to the kids. It’s altogether too easy for me to retreat into my ‘private world’ and tune them out. And that is not unrelated to the troubles that a couple of them have had. . .
- What is the best and worst thing about having a large family?
I want to say that they’re the same thing – you’re rarely alone. There’s never a dull moment, for sure. It’s very gratifying to see the relationships they have with each other – much as they bicker with each other, as they grow up their relationships really do develop some depth and affection. With eight kids, that’s 28 separate relationships of the kids with each other (45, if you throw Molly and me into the mix). And, as the kids get older, it’s very gratifying to see them cultivating a ‘family identity’ – all that shared experience has started being a ‘bonding’ thing. And, I’ve definitely improved my odds of having grandchildren. . . ;)
But, the bickering can reach truly epic proportions, and sometimes I just want to lock them all in the basement and let them have at each other, and then we’ll just go on with the survivors. I’m also a guy who seems to have a more-than-average felt need for some low-key solitude, and that just doesn’t happen very often. And I won’t even get into the grocery bills. . .
There has been a certain good-news/bad-news aspect when it comes to the troubles we’ve had with 1F and 3M – in the course of dealing with those situations, there are six other kids who get sort of short-changed in the process. But, they can also soften the grief for us, if we’re paying attention. . .
So, there you have it. I'll gladly entertain any follow-up questions any of you might have.
I enjoyed this; I hope you all enjoyed it, too. . .
(23 comments)
Tuesday, January 2, 2007
Holy Family
This past Sunday was the Feast of the Holy Family on the Catholic liturgical calendar. In recent years, Molly and I have taken on a certain 'devotion' to the Holy Family. I mean, on a completely basic level, we aspire to holiness for our own family, so there's a certain 'identification' there - here's a holy family; we want our family to be holy; let's pay attention to them. I mean, if you can't take some lessons on family life from Jesus, Mary and Joseph, whatcha gonna do?
Our priest, in his homily Sunday, made what I thought was a very rich, deep point - that, when Christ came to earth in human flesh, he didn't fall out of the sky in armor, riding on a horse; he didn't duck into a nearby phone booth, like Superman; he was born. Born of a woman, and, more to the point for the feast at hand, born into a family. The Incarnation itself happened in the context of a human family. . .
. . . It can seem a bit daunting to measure our family against the standard of Jesus, Mary and Joseph - we aren't saints (and, if you lived with us, you would know just how saintly we really aren't). When I look at our family, the whole concept of 'holy family' and what it might look like applied to us, can become painfully, almost mockingly, abstract. It's hard to see it happening in any kind of 'concrete' way, and sometimes I come close to despair that 'holy' and 'my family' would be utterly oxymoronic if referred to each other.
And yet, even Jesus, Mary and Joseph were fully and completely human, with human lives and human challenges, and their sanctity - their holiness - lies in how they met the challenges they faced, not in the absence of challenges.
And so, for me, might it be that holiness lies not in living so virtuously that nothing bad ever happens to me or my children, but rather in responding virtuously - with goodness and truth - to the things, both good and bad, that do happen to me? And in loving my children when they screw up (like Jesus, who 'while we were still sinners, died for us'). That is holiness on a very earthy, down-and-dirty level. But more and more, it seems to me that that's the holiness I need to pursue.
Lord, have mercy.
(6 comments)
Our priest, in his homily Sunday, made what I thought was a very rich, deep point - that, when Christ came to earth in human flesh, he didn't fall out of the sky in armor, riding on a horse; he didn't duck into a nearby phone booth, like Superman; he was born. Born of a woman, and, more to the point for the feast at hand, born into a family. The Incarnation itself happened in the context of a human family. . .
. . . It can seem a bit daunting to measure our family against the standard of Jesus, Mary and Joseph - we aren't saints (and, if you lived with us, you would know just how saintly we really aren't). When I look at our family, the whole concept of 'holy family' and what it might look like applied to us, can become painfully, almost mockingly, abstract. It's hard to see it happening in any kind of 'concrete' way, and sometimes I come close to despair that 'holy' and 'my family' would be utterly oxymoronic if referred to each other.
And yet, even Jesus, Mary and Joseph were fully and completely human, with human lives and human challenges, and their sanctity - their holiness - lies in how they met the challenges they faced, not in the absence of challenges.
And so, for me, might it be that holiness lies not in living so virtuously that nothing bad ever happens to me or my children, but rather in responding virtuously - with goodness and truth - to the things, both good and bad, that do happen to me? And in loving my children when they screw up (like Jesus, who 'while we were still sinners, died for us'). That is holiness on a very earthy, down-and-dirty level. But more and more, it seems to me that that's the holiness I need to pursue.
Lord, have mercy.
(6 comments)
Thursday, December 7, 2006
Family Dinner
Many years ago, when Molly and I were just newly embarked on the whole adventure of marriage and family, we read something that said that the most significant indicator of successful family life was how often the family had dinner together. If a family had dinner together four or more times a week, that had a strong correlation with all sorts of positive indicators of social and mental health. And so, we worked very hard to establish family dinnertimes as a rock-bottom feature of our family life together.
Now, you wouldn't be surprised if I told you that the theory and the practice haven't always corresponded as closely as we might have wished. Especially once our kids hit middle school, and started getting involved with sports teams (why is it that middle-school sports teams can't seem to practice at any other time than when our family is sitting down to dinner?), dinnertimes where the whole family was together around the table became increasingly hit-and-miss.
But, truth to tell, as our kids (and, I have to say, especially our boys) hit middle school, family dinners, even when we were all present and accounted for, became exercises in futility on an entirely different front - the capacity (or should I say, the incapacity) of the kids to maintain focus on anything like a coherent conversation. I really don't know how it happened, but at some point, our dinnertimes became an ongoing cacophony, with one child idly singing to herself, another idly tapping his plate with his silverware, two boys reciting extended dialogue from 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail', and various and sundry other random noises, assorted pokings of fingers into ear-holes and other available orifices, originating from various other children, all occurring simultaneously and without regard for anything else that might be going on at the time. Molly might ask one of the children how their day went at school, and before the poor child could answer, or, more likely, in the middle of their answer, prompted by something they said, Monty Python would spontaneously erupt from the other side of the table, and thus would end the conversation.
And nothing we did helped the situation. On many occasions, Molly or I would loudly interrupt the recitation; sometimes we would try to give the floor back to the child who was interrupted, and more often we would just launch into the standard rant about showing respect to our brothers and sisters, and dinnertime isn't about showing off our ability to recite movie dialogues, etc, etc. And, once we were finished, they'd start over, only this time reciting from 'Napoleon Dynamite'.
A couple times, the noise got so out of hand that Molly and I just looked at each other, grabbed our silverware, and started yelling and pounding along with the kids. Which actually brought a little humor to the situation, much preferable to the standard anger and frustration. But it still left us a long way from the kind of peaceful, respectful dinnertimes we aspired to and hoped for.
We never just gave in to the cacophony; we continued to try to establish some kind of order, but it always just seemed like an uphill struggle, and a losing one at that.
-------------------------
These days, we have five children living at home - 4M and everyone younger. Dinners are a bit more peaceful; 3M was our main 'comedian', and absent his instigation, things don't get out of hand quite so quickly, or so irretrievably. But 4M and 5M are both heavy into sports teams, which, inevitably (or so it seems) practice during the dinner hour, so most nights we have the three youngest kids around the table with Molly and me.
A couple weeks ago, though, we had all seven of us around the table at the same time. Without any instigation from Molly or me, 5M brought up a question that had come up in one of his classes. While Molly and I did double-takes, 4M chimed in with a similar question from one of his classes. Soon, we were engaged in a really rich discussion on an interesting question, with all of the kids, except maybe 8M, contributing. We touched on questions of theology, moral philosophy, science, mathematics, and all manner of things. We stayed at the table a good 20 minutes longer than we usually do, and nobody was clamoring to be excused. It was very cool.
When we finally ended, and were clearing the table afterward, 7M said to me, "This was a really good family dinner, Dad."
And, in the course of agreeing with him, I might have had to stifle a tear. . .
(10 comments)
Now, you wouldn't be surprised if I told you that the theory and the practice haven't always corresponded as closely as we might have wished. Especially once our kids hit middle school, and started getting involved with sports teams (why is it that middle-school sports teams can't seem to practice at any other time than when our family is sitting down to dinner?), dinnertimes where the whole family was together around the table became increasingly hit-and-miss.
But, truth to tell, as our kids (and, I have to say, especially our boys) hit middle school, family dinners, even when we were all present and accounted for, became exercises in futility on an entirely different front - the capacity (or should I say, the incapacity) of the kids to maintain focus on anything like a coherent conversation. I really don't know how it happened, but at some point, our dinnertimes became an ongoing cacophony, with one child idly singing to herself, another idly tapping his plate with his silverware, two boys reciting extended dialogue from 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail', and various and sundry other random noises, assorted pokings of fingers into ear-holes and other available orifices, originating from various other children, all occurring simultaneously and without regard for anything else that might be going on at the time. Molly might ask one of the children how their day went at school, and before the poor child could answer, or, more likely, in the middle of their answer, prompted by something they said, Monty Python would spontaneously erupt from the other side of the table, and thus would end the conversation.
And nothing we did helped the situation. On many occasions, Molly or I would loudly interrupt the recitation; sometimes we would try to give the floor back to the child who was interrupted, and more often we would just launch into the standard rant about showing respect to our brothers and sisters, and dinnertime isn't about showing off our ability to recite movie dialogues, etc, etc. And, once we were finished, they'd start over, only this time reciting from 'Napoleon Dynamite'.
A couple times, the noise got so out of hand that Molly and I just looked at each other, grabbed our silverware, and started yelling and pounding along with the kids. Which actually brought a little humor to the situation, much preferable to the standard anger and frustration. But it still left us a long way from the kind of peaceful, respectful dinnertimes we aspired to and hoped for.
We never just gave in to the cacophony; we continued to try to establish some kind of order, but it always just seemed like an uphill struggle, and a losing one at that.
-------------------------
These days, we have five children living at home - 4M and everyone younger. Dinners are a bit more peaceful; 3M was our main 'comedian', and absent his instigation, things don't get out of hand quite so quickly, or so irretrievably. But 4M and 5M are both heavy into sports teams, which, inevitably (or so it seems) practice during the dinner hour, so most nights we have the three youngest kids around the table with Molly and me.
A couple weeks ago, though, we had all seven of us around the table at the same time. Without any instigation from Molly or me, 5M brought up a question that had come up in one of his classes. While Molly and I did double-takes, 4M chimed in with a similar question from one of his classes. Soon, we were engaged in a really rich discussion on an interesting question, with all of the kids, except maybe 8M, contributing. We touched on questions of theology, moral philosophy, science, mathematics, and all manner of things. We stayed at the table a good 20 minutes longer than we usually do, and nobody was clamoring to be excused. It was very cool.
When we finally ended, and were clearing the table afterward, 7M said to me, "This was a really good family dinner, Dad."
And, in the course of agreeing with him, I might have had to stifle a tear. . .
(10 comments)
Wednesday, November 8, 2006
Election Day - Jones Family Version
Yesterday was Election Day. In recent years, that has come to have a different kind of significance in the Jones family. A few years back, the company I work for started giving its employees Election Day as a paid holiday (I think the union negotiated it so that union members could be free to 'get out the vote', but that's a story for another time and place). It's not like I needed the extra eight hours to fit voting into my day, but hey, a day off is a day off.
For the last few years, Molly, while basically a stay-at-home mom, has been taking on little odd, part-time gigs here, there, and everywhere, to bring in a little supplemental income. Mostly, she proctors state licensing exams a few days a month - if a plumber, say, wants his journeyman's license, he needs to pass a state exam, and Molly is one of the folks wandering up and down the aisles, making sure nobody cheats. She really appreciates the 'quiet time' in the exam room.
Anyway, a few years back, Molly got the idea of working elections. It actually pays pretty well for a one-day gig, and it's a ton of hours (usually 15-16). But - it means that, on my newly-minted paid holiday, I'm playing Mr. Mom all day. Which isn't all that big a deal - it's not like I'm phobic of looking after my kids, or anything. It's just that I don't do it very often in such a, um, all-encompassing way. I can put a meal together, but I don't know where everything is, so I'm a bit slower and clumsier than I'd like to be; in general, Molly is well-dialed-in to running the household on a daily basis, and I'm a poor substitute at best. But, for the extra couple hundred bucks, I'll soldier through.
Yesterday, Molly got up early - she had to be at the polling place by 6AM. I got up and got breakfast for the school kids, and saw them out the door. One of the kids opened the box of cheerios from the bottom, so the box was 'upside-down' as it sat on the table; but if you worry about stuff like that, you'll never make it in the parent biz.
So, it was just 8M and me at home. And he was still in bed. So far, so good. And I got 8M off to his pre-school mid-morning, so that left me with a few hours to catch up on my reading. This Mr. Mom thing was going really smoothly; I was congratulating myself for the confident, competent manner in which I was pulling it all off.
I should interject here that Molly had spent the weekend canning applesauce - about 50 quarts' worth. My wife is an incredibly hard-working woman (for those of you who read the Bible, Proverbs 31 gives a striking description of Molly). But, with the election taking her out of the house, there was still a fair bit of cleanup left to be done - the kitchen floor, in particular, was a sticky, grungy mess, and I promised that I would mop the kitchen floor for her.
Anyway, I got suitably caught up on my reading before the kids came home from school; I was feeling relaxed and on top of the situation.
Both 4M and 5M had flat tires on their bikes, and Molly wanted me to press them to repair their bikes. When you have a big family, you really need your kids to be as independent as they can manage; having their bikes in working order means they can get to their friend a mile-and-a-half away without hitting Mom up for a ride. Well, the bikes had suffered from benign neglect a bit more than just flat tires, so I wound up spending 45 minutes or so sweating and cussing over the irritating little maintenance items that we hadn't planned on. But the upshot was, that we got a couple working bikes where we'd had none.
I left the bikes, and went back to start mopping the kitchen, but when I got there, the dining room floor was covered with cheerios, while 6F and 7M sat at the dining-room table, reading and having their after-school snack. "Why are there cheerios all over the floor?" I asked. A reasonable question, it seemed to me.
"Oh - 8M spilled them."
And you just left them? You didn't bother to clean them up?
"I didn't make the mess."
I'm exasperated by that whole line of thinking, but, see, now I've got a situation. Where's 8M?
8M, why did you dump cheerios all over the floor?
"I just picked up the box and they fell out."
6F and 7M at this point helpfully point out that the box was opened at the wrong end, so 8M thought he was turning it right-side-up, whereupon all the contents of the box fell out on the floor. I'm starting to get exasperated, but I haven't lost it yet; still clinging to a degree of control.
Then 5M comes wandering through the dining room, blithely crunching through the cheerios strewn across the floor. Which wouldn't have been as bad as all that, except that cheerio dust is stickier than you might think - it clings to the bottom of shoes. Which meant that, once 5M's feet hit the living-room carpet, they left a trail of cheerio-dust footprints. In fact, it was then that I noticed a whole set of cheerio-dust footprints crossing the living-room, and also heading down the hall in the opposite direction.
You guys just tracked crushed cheerios all through the house!
"Oh - sorry."
I have to say that I'm proud of myself. A younger, less mature me would have erupted like Krakatoa. Instead, I simply told the kids to go outside and play for a few minutes. While I collected myself and swept up the dining room. Then I called them back in and handed them the vacuum-cleaner to tend to the carpet (I could accept that the original dumping of the cheerios had been an accident, and, at any rate, 8M isn't quite up to the task of sweeping the floor just yet; but walking through the mess and tracking it onto the carpet - that was culpable, people, and you're gonna clean it up).
Which they did, and, in due time, order was restored. I mopped the kitchen floor, got dinner (fortunately, we had a good crop of leftovers in the fridge), and got the kids to bed. So that, when Molly finally got home about 10PM, I was quietly reading, the very portrait of paternal competence.
"Wow - the kids are in bed?"
Mm-hmm.
"Any problems?"
Oh, nothing I couldn't handle (ahem).
"Wow - and you even mopped the floor!"
Yup.
"I'm impressed! What say we head to bed?" she says, with a distinct twinkle in her eye.
Sounds good to me, dear. What did you have in mind? . . .
(4 comments)
For the last few years, Molly, while basically a stay-at-home mom, has been taking on little odd, part-time gigs here, there, and everywhere, to bring in a little supplemental income. Mostly, she proctors state licensing exams a few days a month - if a plumber, say, wants his journeyman's license, he needs to pass a state exam, and Molly is one of the folks wandering up and down the aisles, making sure nobody cheats. She really appreciates the 'quiet time' in the exam room.
Anyway, a few years back, Molly got the idea of working elections. It actually pays pretty well for a one-day gig, and it's a ton of hours (usually 15-16). But - it means that, on my newly-minted paid holiday, I'm playing Mr. Mom all day. Which isn't all that big a deal - it's not like I'm phobic of looking after my kids, or anything. It's just that I don't do it very often in such a, um, all-encompassing way. I can put a meal together, but I don't know where everything is, so I'm a bit slower and clumsier than I'd like to be; in general, Molly is well-dialed-in to running the household on a daily basis, and I'm a poor substitute at best. But, for the extra couple hundred bucks, I'll soldier through.
Yesterday, Molly got up early - she had to be at the polling place by 6AM. I got up and got breakfast for the school kids, and saw them out the door. One of the kids opened the box of cheerios from the bottom, so the box was 'upside-down' as it sat on the table; but if you worry about stuff like that, you'll never make it in the parent biz.
So, it was just 8M and me at home. And he was still in bed. So far, so good. And I got 8M off to his pre-school mid-morning, so that left me with a few hours to catch up on my reading. This Mr. Mom thing was going really smoothly; I was congratulating myself for the confident, competent manner in which I was pulling it all off.
I should interject here that Molly had spent the weekend canning applesauce - about 50 quarts' worth. My wife is an incredibly hard-working woman (for those of you who read the Bible, Proverbs 31 gives a striking description of Molly). But, with the election taking her out of the house, there was still a fair bit of cleanup left to be done - the kitchen floor, in particular, was a sticky, grungy mess, and I promised that I would mop the kitchen floor for her.
Anyway, I got suitably caught up on my reading before the kids came home from school; I was feeling relaxed and on top of the situation.
Both 4M and 5M had flat tires on their bikes, and Molly wanted me to press them to repair their bikes. When you have a big family, you really need your kids to be as independent as they can manage; having their bikes in working order means they can get to their friend a mile-and-a-half away without hitting Mom up for a ride. Well, the bikes had suffered from benign neglect a bit more than just flat tires, so I wound up spending 45 minutes or so sweating and cussing over the irritating little maintenance items that we hadn't planned on. But the upshot was, that we got a couple working bikes where we'd had none.
I left the bikes, and went back to start mopping the kitchen, but when I got there, the dining room floor was covered with cheerios, while 6F and 7M sat at the dining-room table, reading and having their after-school snack. "Why are there cheerios all over the floor?" I asked. A reasonable question, it seemed to me.
"Oh - 8M spilled them."
And you just left them? You didn't bother to clean them up?
"I didn't make the mess."
I'm exasperated by that whole line of thinking, but, see, now I've got a situation. Where's 8M?
8M, why did you dump cheerios all over the floor?
"I just picked up the box and they fell out."
6F and 7M at this point helpfully point out that the box was opened at the wrong end, so 8M thought he was turning it right-side-up, whereupon all the contents of the box fell out on the floor. I'm starting to get exasperated, but I haven't lost it yet; still clinging to a degree of control.
Then 5M comes wandering through the dining room, blithely crunching through the cheerios strewn across the floor. Which wouldn't have been as bad as all that, except that cheerio dust is stickier than you might think - it clings to the bottom of shoes. Which meant that, once 5M's feet hit the living-room carpet, they left a trail of cheerio-dust footprints. In fact, it was then that I noticed a whole set of cheerio-dust footprints crossing the living-room, and also heading down the hall in the opposite direction.
You guys just tracked crushed cheerios all through the house!
"Oh - sorry."
I have to say that I'm proud of myself. A younger, less mature me would have erupted like Krakatoa. Instead, I simply told the kids to go outside and play for a few minutes. While I collected myself and swept up the dining room. Then I called them back in and handed them the vacuum-cleaner to tend to the carpet (I could accept that the original dumping of the cheerios had been an accident, and, at any rate, 8M isn't quite up to the task of sweeping the floor just yet; but walking through the mess and tracking it onto the carpet - that was culpable, people, and you're gonna clean it up).
Which they did, and, in due time, order was restored. I mopped the kitchen floor, got dinner (fortunately, we had a good crop of leftovers in the fridge), and got the kids to bed. So that, when Molly finally got home about 10PM, I was quietly reading, the very portrait of paternal competence.
"Wow - the kids are in bed?"
Mm-hmm.
"Any problems?"
Oh, nothing I couldn't handle (ahem).
"Wow - and you even mopped the floor!"
Yup.
"I'm impressed! What say we head to bed?" she says, with a distinct twinkle in her eye.
Sounds good to me, dear. What did you have in mind? . . .
(4 comments)
Monday, October 9, 2006
And Now For Something Completely Different. . .
I've generally organized this blog around the general themes of marriage and family life. But today, partly in the interest of full disclosure, and partly because I'm just so giddy about it, I'm going to do a 'sports post'. With apologies in advance to those of you who are wondering, "What the heck is up with that?"
Mr. Husbland has been posting in recent days about the Detroit Tigers and how exciting this baseball season has been in Tigertown (I've already told you all that I live in Michigan, so I don't suppose that I'm 'blowing my cover' by admitting this). But, I thought a more, uh, seasoned treatment of the subject might be helpful for you all (ie, I'm a whole lot older than he is).
I started following the Tigers when I was a little kid - we used to try to imitate Rocky Colavito's stretching exercises when we played pickup games. I was 12 when the Tigers won the World Series in '68, which I think is just about the perfect age to take on a passionate, lifelong commitment to a favorite sports team. Al Kaline was my boyhood hero, and I've come to learn that a boy could do a whole lot worse than emulating Al Kaline (in all sorts of ways). Willie Horton, Norm Cash, Bill Freehan, Mickey Lolich, Denny McLain (well, OK, a boy could do a whole lot better, but come on, he went 31-6 in '68) - these were the ballplayers who were at the very front of my youthful consciousness.
I was older (married, with one daughter and another 'in the oven') when the Tigers won in '84, but I had been a college classmate of Kirk Gibson, and that whole group of guys - Lou Whitaker, Alan Trammell, Lance Parrish, Jack Morris - were all about my age, so I had a certain, more 'peer-ish' identification with them.
After the World Series that year, a buddy of mine came over to my house and handed me a baggie with a small hunk of sod in it. "Thought you might appreciate this," he said. I looked at it, thinking, what the heck? until it slowly dawned on me what it was - he had been down to the stadium for the final game of the Series, and afterward, had torn up a hunk of sod, which he divided into smaller chunks and gave them out to his buddies. And that little piece of sod - about three inches square - grows in my back yard to this day.
The thing that's so cool about this year's Tigers is how they just absolutely came out of nowhere. Three years ago, they set the American League record for losses (and ten guys from that season are still on the team!). We were hoping that this year they'd be better than they had been, but nobody expected them to be anywhere near this good. So it's been just an astounding baseball season. I've just been shaking my head all season - they can't really be this good, can they?
Saturday, I was with a group of 20 or so guys at a buddy's house, ostensibly to watch our alma mater play a football game against our hated in-state rival, but before the first quarter was over, we had switched over to the Tigers game. Jeremy Bonderman is getting a special place ready for himself in all-time Tigers lore (and, I'm not gonna lie - it was all the cooler for beating the Yankees). When the game ended, and the players were running along the stands, spraying champagne on the fans, it was one of the most incredible moments I've ever seen at a sporting event - you don't see players and fans bonding like that very much these days. It was very cool.
There is a cool, trans-generational thing that baseball has that none of the other sports can quite duplicate. I can talk about Al Kaline and Willie Horton, or Jack Morris and Kirk Gibson, and my kids can talk about Justin Verlander and Pudge Rodriguez, but my dad can also talk about Charley Gehringer and Tommy Bridges and Schoolboy Rowe, and you've got 70 years of Tigers history spanned by three generations of our family.
So, thanks for induging my bliss for the moment - I promise we'll get back to our 'normal' topics as soon as possible. And I do realize that we've still got to play the A's, whose pitching is just about as good as ours, and even if we beat the A's, then we have the World Series. But in the context of recent years, it's all a gratuitous gift.
-------------------------
Also, the other day Emily was asking for our favorite jokes, and this seemed a fitting time to tell my own personal favorite:
Two guys in the men's room do their business at the urinals. When they finish, one guy goes to the sink, while the other guy heads for the door.
The guy at the sink calls over his shoulder, "I see you went to Michigan State."
The guy at the door stops, and says, "Why, yes I did. How did you know?"
Sink-guy says (in telling the joke, it really helps if you can affect a Thurston-Howell-type accent at this point), "Well I went to the University of Michigan, and we were taught to always wash our hands after urinating."
Door-guy says, "Oh; that's a really good idea. But at Michigan State they taught us not to piss on our hands."
And with that, I will leave you until next time. . .
(8 comments)
Mr. Husbland has been posting in recent days about the Detroit Tigers and how exciting this baseball season has been in Tigertown (I've already told you all that I live in Michigan, so I don't suppose that I'm 'blowing my cover' by admitting this). But, I thought a more, uh, seasoned treatment of the subject might be helpful for you all (ie, I'm a whole lot older than he is).
I started following the Tigers when I was a little kid - we used to try to imitate Rocky Colavito's stretching exercises when we played pickup games. I was 12 when the Tigers won the World Series in '68, which I think is just about the perfect age to take on a passionate, lifelong commitment to a favorite sports team. Al Kaline was my boyhood hero, and I've come to learn that a boy could do a whole lot worse than emulating Al Kaline (in all sorts of ways). Willie Horton, Norm Cash, Bill Freehan, Mickey Lolich, Denny McLain (well, OK, a boy could do a whole lot better, but come on, he went 31-6 in '68) - these were the ballplayers who were at the very front of my youthful consciousness.
I was older (married, with one daughter and another 'in the oven') when the Tigers won in '84, but I had been a college classmate of Kirk Gibson, and that whole group of guys - Lou Whitaker, Alan Trammell, Lance Parrish, Jack Morris - were all about my age, so I had a certain, more 'peer-ish' identification with them.
After the World Series that year, a buddy of mine came over to my house and handed me a baggie with a small hunk of sod in it. "Thought you might appreciate this," he said. I looked at it, thinking, what the heck? until it slowly dawned on me what it was - he had been down to the stadium for the final game of the Series, and afterward, had torn up a hunk of sod, which he divided into smaller chunks and gave them out to his buddies. And that little piece of sod - about three inches square - grows in my back yard to this day.
The thing that's so cool about this year's Tigers is how they just absolutely came out of nowhere. Three years ago, they set the American League record for losses (and ten guys from that season are still on the team!). We were hoping that this year they'd be better than they had been, but nobody expected them to be anywhere near this good. So it's been just an astounding baseball season. I've just been shaking my head all season - they can't really be this good, can they?
Saturday, I was with a group of 20 or so guys at a buddy's house, ostensibly to watch our alma mater play a football game against our hated in-state rival, but before the first quarter was over, we had switched over to the Tigers game. Jeremy Bonderman is getting a special place ready for himself in all-time Tigers lore (and, I'm not gonna lie - it was all the cooler for beating the Yankees). When the game ended, and the players were running along the stands, spraying champagne on the fans, it was one of the most incredible moments I've ever seen at a sporting event - you don't see players and fans bonding like that very much these days. It was very cool.
There is a cool, trans-generational thing that baseball has that none of the other sports can quite duplicate. I can talk about Al Kaline and Willie Horton, or Jack Morris and Kirk Gibson, and my kids can talk about Justin Verlander and Pudge Rodriguez, but my dad can also talk about Charley Gehringer and Tommy Bridges and Schoolboy Rowe, and you've got 70 years of Tigers history spanned by three generations of our family.
So, thanks for induging my bliss for the moment - I promise we'll get back to our 'normal' topics as soon as possible. And I do realize that we've still got to play the A's, whose pitching is just about as good as ours, and even if we beat the A's, then we have the World Series. But in the context of recent years, it's all a gratuitous gift.
-------------------------
Also, the other day Emily was asking for our favorite jokes, and this seemed a fitting time to tell my own personal favorite:
Two guys in the men's room do their business at the urinals. When they finish, one guy goes to the sink, while the other guy heads for the door.
The guy at the sink calls over his shoulder, "I see you went to Michigan State."
The guy at the door stops, and says, "Why, yes I did. How did you know?"
Sink-guy says (in telling the joke, it really helps if you can affect a Thurston-Howell-type accent at this point), "Well I went to the University of Michigan, and we were taught to always wash our hands after urinating."
Door-guy says, "Oh; that's a really good idea. But at Michigan State they taught us not to piss on our hands."
And with that, I will leave you until next time. . .
(8 comments)
Wednesday, July 5, 2006
The Pause That Refreshes
Just got back from five days Up North, as we say in Michigan. We had a great time - good relaxation, good fun, good family time. We really needed some good family time.
Molly and I and five of our kids (4M on down) shared a lodge with a friend-couple of ours, R (the husband) and M (the wife), and seven of their nine kids; sixteen of us, all cozy together under one roof. Our lodge was 'rustic', which meant no electricity, and pit toilets (altho we were near the campsites, which had showers and flush toilets; much to the relief of 6F)
We were walking distance from a beautiful, sandy Lake Michigan beach, and the weather was beautiful. The kids spent hours and hours playing in the lake, skipping stones, jumping over whitecaps, whatever there was to do at the lake, they did it.
One day we drove a short distance to an out-of-the-way little waterfall hidden away in the middle of nowhere. The falls were maybe about 4-5 feet high, with a little pool at the bottom. Folks were just sort of lounging in the pool, and the kids were jumping into the pool from the top of the falls. 4M and 5M and the teenage boys spent the better part of an hour trying to climb up the falls against the falling water. All very 'unsafe' and (therefore?) tons of fun. . .
We even went to a concert by a Beatles tribute band.
So, all-in-all, we had a great time. We really needed some family-recouping time, with no pressure, just to be able to relax and have fun together, and we got that. God is good.
Molly and I and five of our kids (4M on down) shared a lodge with a friend-couple of ours, R (the husband) and M (the wife), and seven of their nine kids; sixteen of us, all cozy together under one roof. Our lodge was 'rustic', which meant no electricity, and pit toilets (altho we were near the campsites, which had showers and flush toilets; much to the relief of 6F)
We were walking distance from a beautiful, sandy Lake Michigan beach, and the weather was beautiful. The kids spent hours and hours playing in the lake, skipping stones, jumping over whitecaps, whatever there was to do at the lake, they did it.
One day we drove a short distance to an out-of-the-way little waterfall hidden away in the middle of nowhere. The falls were maybe about 4-5 feet high, with a little pool at the bottom. Folks were just sort of lounging in the pool, and the kids were jumping into the pool from the top of the falls. 4M and 5M and the teenage boys spent the better part of an hour trying to climb up the falls against the falling water. All very 'unsafe' and (therefore?) tons of fun. . .
We even went to a concert by a Beatles tribute band.
So, all-in-all, we had a great time. We really needed some family-recouping time, with no pressure, just to be able to relax and have fun together, and we got that. God is good.
Friday, May 26, 2006
HOW Many Kids?
"So, are you guys Catholic or Mormon?"
That's a typical question that Molly and I get whenever someone hears for the first time that we're the parents of eight (count 'em) children.
"Why yes, we're Catholic, how did you know?"
I was actually surprised at how low the 'Catholic threshold' can be nowadays. When our third child was born, I took a box of candy to work, along with a brief birth announcement, and left them by the coffee station. One of my co-workers dropped by my cubicle later, and asked how many kids we had now. I told her this was our third.
"THREE KIDS!" she sputtered. "Are you guys Catholic?"
So now, you get the Catholic jokes with three kids? Sheesh.
One time Molly was grocery shopping with whichever of the kids was the youngest at the time. Another woman, noticing the exceptional cuteness of the baby, approached her to chat. "Is he your first?" Informed that, no indeed, he was the youngest of whatever large number was current at the time, the woman stepped back with a look of shocked horror. "How could you have so many?" she gasped. Molly smiled sweetly, leaned in conspiratorially, and whispered, "We REALLY like sex!"
I love my wife.
I actually came across a snappy comeback a while ago, that I'm just waiting for an opportunity to use - "Eight kids? How many are you planning to have?" "Who knows, we're only halfway through the Kama Sutra."
Heh, heh, heh. . .
(0/1 comments)
That's a typical question that Molly and I get whenever someone hears for the first time that we're the parents of eight (count 'em) children.
"Why yes, we're Catholic, how did you know?"
I was actually surprised at how low the 'Catholic threshold' can be nowadays. When our third child was born, I took a box of candy to work, along with a brief birth announcement, and left them by the coffee station. One of my co-workers dropped by my cubicle later, and asked how many kids we had now. I told her this was our third.
"THREE KIDS!" she sputtered. "Are you guys Catholic?"
So now, you get the Catholic jokes with three kids? Sheesh.
One time Molly was grocery shopping with whichever of the kids was the youngest at the time. Another woman, noticing the exceptional cuteness of the baby, approached her to chat. "Is he your first?" Informed that, no indeed, he was the youngest of whatever large number was current at the time, the woman stepped back with a look of shocked horror. "How could you have so many?" she gasped. Molly smiled sweetly, leaned in conspiratorially, and whispered, "We REALLY like sex!"
I love my wife.
I actually came across a snappy comeback a while ago, that I'm just waiting for an opportunity to use - "Eight kids? How many are you planning to have?" "Who knows, we're only halfway through the Kama Sutra."
Heh, heh, heh. . .
(0/1 comments)
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