Whenever someone, usually someone who grew up elsewhere, said to me when I was growing up, "Nothing grows in Nevada!" I'd say only three words: "My mother's yard."
"Well, OK, in your mom's yard," they'd say. My mother could grow anything. She and my dad bought a piece of typically empty Nevada land; their friends told them that they'd "never be able to grow anything there." Mom told, with glee, the story of how their most vocal critic pulled into the back driveway in the spring, when the flowers were blooming, the lawn was velvet, and the trees were filled out. "He stared with his mouth open, then got back in his car and drove away. He never came back, but we never heard any grief from him again."
My mom literally brought home cut branches, stuck them in the ground, and they turned into trees. A now towering cedar came home from a picnic in a styrofoam cup. She had fruit trees, vegetables, more flowers than you can count.
Now, it's been more than three years since she passed away, her yard hasn't been watered even once, and it's an absolute jungle. The shrubs and vines and things have taken over. The flowers are reseeding. There are seedling trees that have to go, because they have no room to grow up where they are. They're burying fences and patios.
Since I was a kid, the largest tree in her front yard has belonged to my friend. I mentioned it in my blog post just after Mom passed away ("Mom"): "Can I build a Swiss Family Robinson tree house in your tree and just live in it?" one of my friends asked her once. "Sure. You just let me know when," she said. Every few years, he'd bring it up - "That tree still there?" and she'd say, "Still waiting for you." "Maybe I'll bring my son over, and we'll build that treehouse," he'd say. "I'll be here," she'd tell him. We've called it Tony's Tree for years. It will always be Tony's Tree.
They talked about his planned treehouse many times. "I want it to have power, plumbing, everything. I want to be able to live in it," Tony would say. "Sure," Mom would answer. After storms, he'd want to know, "How's my tree?"
"You're never going to cut that tree down, are you?" he asked once. "Oh, no," she said, sounding scandalized.
After Mom died, Tony came over to her house for her memorial, and again for Thanksgiving. "Is that tree still mine?" he asked. "Of course! It's always going to be yours!" My whole family knew. It was his; any time he wanted to build a treehouse, he was welcome. His kids were too old to be excited about a treehouse, but he hoped to have grandchildren. Maybe some day, they'd get to use it. "Maybe some day, I'll be homeless, and need to live in it," he joked.
A year and a half after Mom died, Tony died. I was unprepared for it ("Loving Tony"). He was sober, he wasn't sick, he'd recovered from a devastating car accident - everything was supposed to be OK.
Nothing on Earth lasts forever.
The tree comforted me. It stood where it always had. It waited.
I was comforted by the fact that we all knew that it was still Tony's Tree. Some day, when we had the money, I would build the treehouse. Maybe Tony's grandkids would get to use it. When I looked at it, I saw my mother, I saw Tony, I saw possibilities, I saw stability and predictability.
But the tree is old, and the weather is harsh.
"A big branch broke off of Uncle Tony's tree," said my daughter. She lives in her grandmother's house (which is now her Uncle Gary's house).
"Yeah, a lot of branches broke during that storm," I answered. Heavy, wet snow, much needed snow, and high wind had wrought havoc around town. But that tree is older than I am. Its trunk is probably 12 feet or more around. It would be fine, I was sure.
Then I went down and looked at the tree. The broken branch is huge, looking like a decent sized tree by itself. Its base is as big around as a person, and left a deep gash in the trunk as it peeled off. It's the kind of gash that invites insects or disease. Worse, as I looked up into the canopy, I saw what I've been ignoring and denying - dead wood.
Many of Mom's willow trees are showing dead wood in their higher branches. It happens, it's normal. But I have been actively in denial about how much is in Tony's Tree. There's quite a bit.
"That whole tree has to go," said someone behind me. It may have been my husband, or my son; I don't know. I just stared at the tree. "Yeah," I said, but I didn't mean it. That tree will outlive me - won't it? It outlived my mom. It outlived Tony. It'll always be there, won't it?
"It has to go." Someone else said it. It probably does, but I'm not OK with that.
The tree is coming to the end of its life. I have to wrap my head around that.
We puttered around doing yard chores; my daughter isn't a yard person. I kept thinking about the tree. I walked up and put my hand on its trunk. "I know," I said, "I know."
"Who are you talking to?" my son wanted to know.
"The tree." Then the tears came.
As long as the tree was there, I didn't have to let go. There are other trees - willows, apple trees, plum trees, junipers, a cedar, maples, an oak, stumps from long dead poplars. I would be OK losing any of them, even all of them, but not this tree. I was never prepared to lose this tree.
My son hugged me, long and hard.
My daughter came out of the house, saw me, and said, "What's wrong with Mom?"
"Uncle Tony's tree."
I know that I won't love them any less if I don't have their things with me. I know that they love me, with or without their stuff. I know that I haven't failed the tree, or failed my loved ones. I understand all of that. It's simply an intellectual understanding, though, not an emotional response. I will miss this tree more than I can say.
My family has assured me that we will make something with the wood, something great. We will leave the trunk standing. Maybe we'll hire a chainsaw artist. Maybe we'll make it look like the home of fairy tale elves. We will make something, something wonderful, something to honor Tony and my mother. I know that we will.
But change is hard.
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Sunday, February 7, 2016
Goddess Pele
I wanted to see Kilauea for most of my life. I'm lucky enough to live somewhere with access to volcanoes, so the concept of "volcano" wasn't new to me. Mountains with names like Lassen and Shasta are familiar places for me; plus, I've been to Yellowstone. I've walked through lava tubes, seen a hillside of obsidian, watched boiling mud pots. But the idea of an erupting volcano was so exciting, especially an eruption that you could get close enough to safely watch. When Kilauea started erupting, she became a "must do" sight.
My brother can see volcanoes - Mt. Hood and Mt. Adams - from his front porch. He narrowly missed being in the Mt. St. Helens blast zone in 1980, and he brought me a jar of flour-fine ash the next time he came to visit. As a scenic and wildlife photographer, though, he too wanted to see Kilauea.
We both finally got to see her in our middle age years, on separate trips. I was not really prepared for how Hawaiian volcanoes differed from the ones I knew. I was used cone shaped mountains, steeply rising and covered in snow. Sometimes, age and eruption would round the summit, but they still had a recognizable look. I'd been on Oahu before, and thought that the Big Island's volcanoes might look like Oahu's mountains.
Instead, by my frame of reference, they barely looked like mountains. Even Mauna Loa, the distance from her summit to the ocean floor making her the largest mountain on Earth, just looked like a long, gradual, unspectacular rise, ending in more of a plateau than a peak.
Kilauea doesn't even look like a separate mountain to me. I can't see any definition between her and the surrounding area. Plus, her caldera is lower than the surrounding area, not on a peak, like I'd expected.
"It's a steaming pit," said a man close to us, on his first visit there. Well, OK, technically, if you have no poetry in your soul.
It was fascinating, but not what I'd expected.
On our first visit, we were staying about three and a half hours away, so we only saw Hawaii Volcanoes National Park in the daylight. We saw the caldera, participated in a ranger led program, walked through Thurston Lava Tube, saw steam vents. I was happy to see someplace I'd wanted to go for so long.
Then it happened - the first glow of orange in the steam.
Can't see it? Don't worry; it got more and more pronounced as darkness fell.
Then it was dark, and the view went from stunning to magical.
I thought that it couldn't get much better than that.
But we still had our helicopter ride!
Do you see what we're all packing? Of course - cameras. We had wide lenses, telephoto lenses, a GoPro; this would be one well recorded flight.
(That fanny pack kind of thing we're all wearing? That's a parachute. Or, maybe a flotation device. I'm not kidding. They're mandatory.)
We took off from the far side of the island and headed inland, over the "shoulder road" between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, headed for Kilauea. "Are there any active lava flows right now?" my son asked. We're aware that nature doesn't take orders or requests, but we were hoping.
"I'm sure we'll see something exciting. For one thing, the floor of the caldera fell last night," the pilot said. That means that the hard crust on an area had crumbled, and left the flowing lava underneath visible. For the pilot, this was an everyday occurrence, but for mainlanders, it was very exciting.
As we approached the caldera, my husband, shooting with the wide angle lens, was shooting images like this:
When we got closer, my zoom lens allowed me allowed me to shoot straight down into the caldera. The pilot circled over the volcano, one direction and then another.
"They avoided the last few flows. Poor things, they're goners now," the pilot said.
I felt for the trees, but it was fascinating. Shooting through the moving, curved helicopter windows was difficult, but all of us managed to get numerous shots of this truly once in a lifetime experience.
Mahalo, Goddess Pele, for a look into your home.
All photos, copyright 2015, The Reflection Works Photography
My brother can see volcanoes - Mt. Hood and Mt. Adams - from his front porch. He narrowly missed being in the Mt. St. Helens blast zone in 1980, and he brought me a jar of flour-fine ash the next time he came to visit. As a scenic and wildlife photographer, though, he too wanted to see Kilauea.
We both finally got to see her in our middle age years, on separate trips. I was not really prepared for how Hawaiian volcanoes differed from the ones I knew. I was used cone shaped mountains, steeply rising and covered in snow. Sometimes, age and eruption would round the summit, but they still had a recognizable look. I'd been on Oahu before, and thought that the Big Island's volcanoes might look like Oahu's mountains.
Instead, by my frame of reference, they barely looked like mountains. Even Mauna Loa, the distance from her summit to the ocean floor making her the largest mountain on Earth, just looked like a long, gradual, unspectacular rise, ending in more of a plateau than a peak.
It was fascinating, but not what I'd expected.
On our first visit, we were staying about three and a half hours away, so we only saw Hawaii Volcanoes National Park in the daylight. We saw the caldera, participated in a ranger led program, walked through Thurston Lava Tube, saw steam vents. I was happy to see someplace I'd wanted to go for so long.
My brother enjoyed his first trip to the park, but he was on a guided excursion from Oahu, so he had even less time there than we did.
None of us got to see live lava flows, the volcano at night, or (on our wish list) lava flows hitting the sea.
When we came back years later on a family trip, with my husband, most of my children and my brother together, we had wish lists of experiences that we missed the first time. Topping my brother's list were 1. a helicopter tour, and 2. seeing the caldera at night. Those things were on our list, as well.
There were seven of us, all arriving at different times. The first day we were all there, we planned to spend all day in the park. We did everything we'd done before and more, including a drive down the length of Chain of Craters Road.
Before sunset, we staked out spots near the Jagger Museum and waited for dark. For the seven of us, we had 5 regular cameras and 6 cell phone cameras. This spot is the closest observation area to the caldera, and the cameras clicked with regularity.
Can't see it? Don't worry; it got more and more pronounced as darkness fell.
It was just gorgeous. Click, click, click!
But we still had our helicopter ride!
Do you see what we're all packing? Of course - cameras. We had wide lenses, telephoto lenses, a GoPro; this would be one well recorded flight.
(That fanny pack kind of thing we're all wearing? That's a parachute. Or, maybe a flotation device. I'm not kidding. They're mandatory.)
We took off from the far side of the island and headed inland, over the "shoulder road" between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, headed for Kilauea. "Are there any active lava flows right now?" my son asked. We're aware that nature doesn't take orders or requests, but we were hoping.
"I'm sure we'll see something exciting. For one thing, the floor of the caldera fell last night," the pilot said. That means that the hard crust on an area had crumbled, and left the flowing lava underneath visible. For the pilot, this was an everyday occurrence, but for mainlanders, it was very exciting.
As we approached the caldera, my husband, shooting with the wide angle lens, was shooting images like this:
When we got closer, my zoom lens allowed me allowed me to shoot straight down into the caldera. The pilot circled over the volcano, one direction and then another.
OH MY GOODNESS! It was amazing.
As we flew on, the pilot said, "I'll just watch for smoke." That was likely, he said, to indicate something that we'd want to see.
A rising wisp of smoke led to this:
The next led to this:
Oh my gosh, oh my gosh! It looked just like something on the National Geographic Channel. "That's new," the pilot said. "It'll be gone in about 15 minutes."
It's hard to estimate from the air, but I think the drip was about ten feet long. I zoomed out to get a bit of perspective, and in again to watch it ooze.
The next sight of rising smoke was larger. An isolated stand of trees was smoking, then catching fire, from the lava at their feet.
I felt for the trees, but it was fascinating. Shooting through the moving, curved helicopter windows was difficult, but all of us managed to get numerous shots of this truly once in a lifetime experience.
Mahalo, Goddess Pele, for a look into your home.
All photos, copyright 2015, The Reflection Works Photography
Saturday, January 9, 2016
Language Lessons, Part 2: Vowel Sounds
Yes, there are more pressing issues. But this is making me crazy.
I know that language, especially English, is a work in progress. English complicates things by being an assemblage of other languages, and breaking its own rules with regularity. So, things change; I understand.
I can get on board with new words - we had to figure out what to call the Internet after its invention - or new usages (text, anyone?) But we do not need to change or substitute sounds. We really don't.
Here's my problem: the word "yes." It's a perfectly good word. It's succinct and easily understandable. It's one of the first words we learn as infants. We do not need it to be "yass" or "yuss" or "yiss."
I mean, for crying out loud, what IS that? How did it start? For one thing, it sounds like baby talk. How are grown humans OK sounding like toddlers? And WHY in the world have we decided that it's cuter or more acceptable, or... what do people think that it is, anyway? And what mass hysteria is causing so many of us to use it?
My husband has a tendency to mush vowel sounds. You'd think that a man named "Dan" with a father named "Don" would be more attuned to vowel sounds, but somewhere in his elementary schooling (which, he says, did not include phonics or the ubiquitous instruction I often received to "sound it out") some teacher made a passing reference to the schwa, and he internalized the idea that vowels are interchangeable. It makes me crazy. For instance, the word "if" usually comes out of his mouth as "eff." Ugh.
Sometimes, when he mispronounces some vowel sound or other and then rolls his eyes when I correct him, I say, "OK, Dun."
I mean pin, pen, pan, and pun are entirely different words! Vowels - they're important!
The thing is, he's doing it unconsciously, or because he's actually unaware of the correct pronunciation. He hasn't made a conscious choice to mispronounce something because he thinks it's cute or fashionable or somehow, what, more effective than the correct pronunciation. It's an honest mistake, and it still makes me crazy. Imagine how aggravating I find it when someone does it on purpose, for reasons on which I am completely unclear - fashion? Habit? Conformity?
In the name of sanity, when you're enthused, stick with the word we already have - "YES!" Drag out the sound if you want. If you're approximating a Southern US accent, feel free to go with "yay-es!"
Just know that if you write "YUUUUSSSS!" or "YAAAASSSS!!!" or anything similar, on your social media or anywhere else, I think unkind things. I may shave my estimation of your IQ down by several points.
Yes, I know that this makes me a curmudgeon and the language police. I don't care.
We have a perfectly good word. Please use it.
I know that language, especially English, is a work in progress. English complicates things by being an assemblage of other languages, and breaking its own rules with regularity. So, things change; I understand.
I can get on board with new words - we had to figure out what to call the Internet after its invention - or new usages (text, anyone?) But we do not need to change or substitute sounds. We really don't.
Here's my problem: the word "yes." It's a perfectly good word. It's succinct and easily understandable. It's one of the first words we learn as infants. We do not need it to be "yass" or "yuss" or "yiss."
I mean, for crying out loud, what IS that? How did it start? For one thing, it sounds like baby talk. How are grown humans OK sounding like toddlers? And WHY in the world have we decided that it's cuter or more acceptable, or... what do people think that it is, anyway? And what mass hysteria is causing so many of us to use it?
My husband has a tendency to mush vowel sounds. You'd think that a man named "Dan" with a father named "Don" would be more attuned to vowel sounds, but somewhere in his elementary schooling (which, he says, did not include phonics or the ubiquitous instruction I often received to "sound it out") some teacher made a passing reference to the schwa, and he internalized the idea that vowels are interchangeable. It makes me crazy. For instance, the word "if" usually comes out of his mouth as "eff." Ugh.
Sometimes, when he mispronounces some vowel sound or other and then rolls his eyes when I correct him, I say, "OK, Dun."
I mean pin, pen, pan, and pun are entirely different words! Vowels - they're important!
The thing is, he's doing it unconsciously, or because he's actually unaware of the correct pronunciation. He hasn't made a conscious choice to mispronounce something because he thinks it's cute or fashionable or somehow, what, more effective than the correct pronunciation. It's an honest mistake, and it still makes me crazy. Imagine how aggravating I find it when someone does it on purpose, for reasons on which I am completely unclear - fashion? Habit? Conformity?
In the name of sanity, when you're enthused, stick with the word we already have - "YES!" Drag out the sound if you want. If you're approximating a Southern US accent, feel free to go with "yay-es!"
Just know that if you write "YUUUUSSSS!" or "YAAAASSSS!!!" or anything similar, on your social media or anywhere else, I think unkind things. I may shave my estimation of your IQ down by several points.
Yes, I know that this makes me a curmudgeon and the language police. I don't care.
We have a perfectly good word. Please use it.
Monday, January 4, 2016
"What Would You Do If...?"
One of my children has spent a lifetime in experimenting with her ideas of parental affection, and how and why it's bestowed. "Will you still love me if I do this? Will you still love me if I do that? Will you still love me if I'm different from my siblings?"
I knew from reading extensively that this was very normal, and I didn't take it - don't take it - personally. It didn't resonate with me emotionally, though, because I could never recall feeling that way myself. My parents' feelings were a constant, like the mountains. I don't think I felt particularly capable of affecting their affection, one way or another. I didn't either luxuriate in it or long for it.
One of the problems this child and I have in understanding each other is that she's a figurative speaker and thinker, who chooses her words for the effect she thinks they'll have instead of for their accuracy. I am a literal thinker, who chooses my words for accuracy, and understates when in doubt.
This means that she frequently looks for hidden meanings when there aren't any. She also tends to think that I'm being sarcastic when I'm not. When given any household chore as a child, she was likely to ask, "Why do I have to?" The answer was always, "Because you live here." She was sure that this was me being a smart mouth, even after complaining to other adults in her life and being told, "That's honestly why you have to."
(Sometimes, though, she took me at my word. In her early teens she wanted to know, "What would you do if I dyed my hair blue?" I responded, "Nothing. It's hair. It'll grow back." She never did dye it blue; it wasn't as much fun if her parents wouldn't be scandalized.)
She was also convinced, deep in her heart of hearts, that if other people disagreed with us, especially if they were people she liked, or a number of people that she considered to be significant, we were legally and morally obligated to change our minds and our rules. At 13, she was sincerely convinced that if we didn't send her to summer camp, we'd go to jail. ("Don't all kids think that?" she asked as an adult. Um - no, Child, they don't.)
"So-and-so thinks your rule is stupid!" we heard repeatedly. I'd usually reply with something like, "Well, I make the rules in my house," which she thought was both a cop out and "stupid." At 12, after I'd pulled rank and said, "I'm the parent. I get to decide," she said, "So you get to do things just because you're the mom? I thought we were all equal here!" My reply of, "Then you thought wrong" infuriated her.
If she kept at it, I'd say, "So, if they get to make the rules for my family, I get to make the rules for their family, right?"
"NO!"
"Why not? That seems fair."
"Because your rules are STUPID and theirs aren't!"
"All my friends think you're so mean!" she snapped at me, after I'd said no to something.
"Good. That means I'm doing my job right." Like most parents, I would die for my kids, but that doesn't mean I should cave to their every whim. The kids would think I was a fantastic parent if I threw out every rule and let them do whatever they wanted, but that wouldn't be good for them, or create healthy, functioning adults.
After my daughter huffed away, another mother pulled me aside to assure me that she spent time with my daughter's friends, "and none of them think you're mean. They all really like you." It was sweet of her, but she needn't have bothered. I do what I think is right; I don't try to win the approval of children. (Or adults, for that matter.)
Throughout her childhood, we heard a constant litany of, "What would you do if...?" More than once, she asked, "What would you do if I was sent to prison?" The answer was always, "Visit you on visiting day."
She must not have believed me, because she was still asking into her mid-20s - "What would you do if I was in prison?" One day, after getting the usual answer, "Visit you on visiting day," she said, "What if it was for a really terrible crime?"
"Visit you on visiting day."
"What if it was for a really awful, messy, premeditated murder?"
"Visit you on visiting day."
"Really?"
"Are you planning on murdering someone?"
"No. But would you really?"
"If you've done something stupid or violent, I expect you to face the consequences. I'm not going to lie for you. I'm not going to hide you from the police. I'm not going to whisk you away to a country with no extradition. I'm not going to bake a file into a cake and help you escape. But you're still my child, and I will always love you. I will visit you on visiting days, and I will be there on the day that you get out."
She must have finally believed me, because she hasn't asked since. (She has not planned or committed any murders, either.)
I think this is how we treat God sometimes. "Will you still love me if I do this?" "If you're really a loving parent, you'll love me even if I do that." Or, "You can't possibly love me after what I've done." "If you love me, you'll give me what I want. If I don't get it, you must not love me."
Sometimes, I think we sound like small children. Any of us who are parents have faced furious or despondent offspring, just sure that if we love them, we'll let them have candy for breakfast, buy them a pony, abolish bedtimes. They can't believe that we ignore their tears or their feelings or their protests. We're sometimes like that. We're seriously, deeply hurt when things don't go our way. Doesn't God love us? Shouldn't that mean that life is easy and we are always happy, and we get what we want? We recognize that our children don't have our perspective and experience, but we can't imagine that God knows something that we don't.
Or, we go the opposite direction. We decide that God loves other people, but not us. We screwed up. We did stupid, willful, harmful stuff. No one could ever love us after that.
The older I get, the more I see theology as a parent/child relationship. God is the parent. He loves us, more than we will ever know. He always will, no matter what we've done. That does not mean that he should always give us what we want - even if not getting it pains us and makes us sad or angry, and even if other people agree with us and think things should be done our way. He not only knows best, it's his job to do things as HE sees fit, not as we see fit.
Like every parent, he will be disappointed, exasperated, angry. Yet he will be beside us whenever he can, and he will be waiting to help us start over and get it right after we've screwed things up. He will do this even if we hate him or think that he's mean.
Because that's what good parents do.
And if we humans can figure that out, trust me, God knew it long ago, and he's better at it than we could be.
I knew from reading extensively that this was very normal, and I didn't take it - don't take it - personally. It didn't resonate with me emotionally, though, because I could never recall feeling that way myself. My parents' feelings were a constant, like the mountains. I don't think I felt particularly capable of affecting their affection, one way or another. I didn't either luxuriate in it or long for it.
One of the problems this child and I have in understanding each other is that she's a figurative speaker and thinker, who chooses her words for the effect she thinks they'll have instead of for their accuracy. I am a literal thinker, who chooses my words for accuracy, and understates when in doubt.
This means that she frequently looks for hidden meanings when there aren't any. She also tends to think that I'm being sarcastic when I'm not. When given any household chore as a child, she was likely to ask, "Why do I have to?" The answer was always, "Because you live here." She was sure that this was me being a smart mouth, even after complaining to other adults in her life and being told, "That's honestly why you have to."
(Sometimes, though, she took me at my word. In her early teens she wanted to know, "What would you do if I dyed my hair blue?" I responded, "Nothing. It's hair. It'll grow back." She never did dye it blue; it wasn't as much fun if her parents wouldn't be scandalized.)
She was also convinced, deep in her heart of hearts, that if other people disagreed with us, especially if they were people she liked, or a number of people that she considered to be significant, we were legally and morally obligated to change our minds and our rules. At 13, she was sincerely convinced that if we didn't send her to summer camp, we'd go to jail. ("Don't all kids think that?" she asked as an adult. Um - no, Child, they don't.)
"So-and-so thinks your rule is stupid!" we heard repeatedly. I'd usually reply with something like, "Well, I make the rules in my house," which she thought was both a cop out and "stupid." At 12, after I'd pulled rank and said, "I'm the parent. I get to decide," she said, "So you get to do things just because you're the mom? I thought we were all equal here!" My reply of, "Then you thought wrong" infuriated her.
If she kept at it, I'd say, "So, if they get to make the rules for my family, I get to make the rules for their family, right?"
"NO!"
"Why not? That seems fair."
"Because your rules are STUPID and theirs aren't!"
"All my friends think you're so mean!" she snapped at me, after I'd said no to something.
"Good. That means I'm doing my job right." Like most parents, I would die for my kids, but that doesn't mean I should cave to their every whim. The kids would think I was a fantastic parent if I threw out every rule and let them do whatever they wanted, but that wouldn't be good for them, or create healthy, functioning adults.
After my daughter huffed away, another mother pulled me aside to assure me that she spent time with my daughter's friends, "and none of them think you're mean. They all really like you." It was sweet of her, but she needn't have bothered. I do what I think is right; I don't try to win the approval of children. (Or adults, for that matter.)
Throughout her childhood, we heard a constant litany of, "What would you do if...?" More than once, she asked, "What would you do if I was sent to prison?" The answer was always, "Visit you on visiting day."
She must not have believed me, because she was still asking into her mid-20s - "What would you do if I was in prison?" One day, after getting the usual answer, "Visit you on visiting day," she said, "What if it was for a really terrible crime?"
"Visit you on visiting day."
"What if it was for a really awful, messy, premeditated murder?"
"Visit you on visiting day."
"Really?"
"Are you planning on murdering someone?"
"No. But would you really?"
"If you've done something stupid or violent, I expect you to face the consequences. I'm not going to lie for you. I'm not going to hide you from the police. I'm not going to whisk you away to a country with no extradition. I'm not going to bake a file into a cake and help you escape. But you're still my child, and I will always love you. I will visit you on visiting days, and I will be there on the day that you get out."
She must have finally believed me, because she hasn't asked since. (She has not planned or committed any murders, either.)
I think this is how we treat God sometimes. "Will you still love me if I do this?" "If you're really a loving parent, you'll love me even if I do that." Or, "You can't possibly love me after what I've done." "If you love me, you'll give me what I want. If I don't get it, you must not love me."
Sometimes, I think we sound like small children. Any of us who are parents have faced furious or despondent offspring, just sure that if we love them, we'll let them have candy for breakfast, buy them a pony, abolish bedtimes. They can't believe that we ignore their tears or their feelings or their protests. We're sometimes like that. We're seriously, deeply hurt when things don't go our way. Doesn't God love us? Shouldn't that mean that life is easy and we are always happy, and we get what we want? We recognize that our children don't have our perspective and experience, but we can't imagine that God knows something that we don't.
Or, we go the opposite direction. We decide that God loves other people, but not us. We screwed up. We did stupid, willful, harmful stuff. No one could ever love us after that.
The older I get, the more I see theology as a parent/child relationship. God is the parent. He loves us, more than we will ever know. He always will, no matter what we've done. That does not mean that he should always give us what we want - even if not getting it pains us and makes us sad or angry, and even if other people agree with us and think things should be done our way. He not only knows best, it's his job to do things as HE sees fit, not as we see fit.
Like every parent, he will be disappointed, exasperated, angry. Yet he will be beside us whenever he can, and he will be waiting to help us start over and get it right after we've screwed things up. He will do this even if we hate him or think that he's mean.
Because that's what good parents do.
And if we humans can figure that out, trust me, God knew it long ago, and he's better at it than we could be.
Thursday, August 13, 2015
Wasted on the Way
I've seen Crosby, Stills and Nash (never with Neil Young) live in concert twice.
The first time was in the mid 1980s. David Crosby was still using; he hadn't been to prison yet. The concert here started late; finally, after about 30 minutes, a man in a camo shirt and bandana came out and apologized. I thought he was a roadie; he was Stephen Stills. "We're running late. David's left the hotel and is stuck in traffic. We'll begin as soon as he arrives." It took two more "any time now, we hope" announcements before they finally took the stage.
They sounded great, all of them. Crosby, though, never looked up, never chatted, never engaged. He was on autopilot (and high as a kite).
Toward the end of the show, Stills started talking about the time they spent apart, not recording together, or even really talking to each other. "We're artists; we have egos, we get hurt," he said. "But then, one day, I got a phone call. Someone had written this amazing song." Nash looked down and fiddled with his guitar, but for the first time that night, Crosby's head snapped up. He looked straight out at the audience, and waved to get their attention. Then he took a small step back, out of Nash's line of sight. As Stills said, "... this amazing song, that just melted away all of the bitterness, that made us come together again, that made us both regret the time lost and come together like we'd never been apart," Crosby pointed, with both arms, at Nash's back. He kept looking at the audience, pointing, making huge gestures, making sure we got it. THIS MAN - this man wrote the song and brought us together. Nash kept busy tuning his guitar.
Years later, when Crosby was in prison, Graham Nash spontaneously phoned our local radio station, and probably more across the nation, just to talk, to say, "I've heard some of what David's been writing in prison. It's brilliant. I think it's some of the best work he's ever done. I can't wait to record it when he's able." He had no album to sell, no tour to promote, just the news that his friend was well and writing.
Sure, they have egos. But to watch them continually make sure that you notice the other guy's contribution, to see them truly value the other guy's input over their own, that's brotherhood.
I bought that first record they put out after David left prison. (It featured all four, including Neil Young.) It is indeed brilliant.
Watch them sing, years later, that song that brought them together:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg-Qdrr3XSk
Watch them sing, years later, that song that brought them together:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kg-Qdrr3XSk
Wednesday, August 5, 2015
Feeding Yourself
It's always hard to know what balance to strike between doing things for your children, and having them do them for themselves. Sometimes, I think I get it right. Sometimes, I'm not so sure.
When my kids were little, I made breakfast for them every day. We only had the whole family at breakfast - at family meals, really, meals including all of us - when their dad had days off. He was working a rotating schedule of day shift, swing shift, graveyard shift, then back to day shift again. Weekends could be a day and a half, two days or four days (the rotation from graveyard back to days). When they were older, he worked steady hours, 3 am to 3 pm, which meant family dinner at about 5, but there was no way we were getting up at 2 am to have breakfast together.
I don't make elaborate meals. One of their favorite breakfasts was microwaved scrambled eggs and cinnamon toast. Another was sliced fruit, usually bananas and apples, in yogurt, topped with granola. We went through our fair share of cold cereal, oatmeal and Cream of Wheat, as well.
Once the kids were in school, I insisted that they be dressed before they came to breakfast. If we were running late, they could eat in the car on the way to school, but they couldn't get dressed or brush teeth in the car. This plan went pretty smoothly until they got a bit older. Then, obsessions with the "right" outfit, requests for fancy hairstyles and general dawdling meant that there was less and less time for breakfast. I resorted to toast, muffins or Pop Tarts in the car, until it became clear that I'd spend my days fishing untouched food out from under my seats. When I insisted that food be eaten at the table, even if it meant no fancy hair, there was much howling. I found myself thinking, "Are you kidding? You're upset because you're being fed? How is that even possible?" I even caved to them - and their dad - and bought cereals that were little more than spun sugar. They still griped.
By the time they hit middle school, in seventh grade, griping about "having to eat" was a pretty firmly established routine. It still astonished me. (Years later, I'm still astonished.) When they were asked to skip a meal for fasting with the church, or when meals were late on weekends or while traveling, they wailed about being "starving," yet they howled about being "not hungry" on school mornings. It had nothing to do with hunger, and everything to do with a power play. I even let them drench their oatmeal in syrup, or otherwise make sugar the main course, and they griped. Griping was a reflex action.
When the oldest kids were 12 and 11, and the third child was almost 4, we had Baby #4. One Saturday morning, when we were still measuring her age in days, the big kids were just waking up and coming down the stairs while the baby had just finished eating, and I was hoping to head back to bed. I resigned myself to more exhaustion when I suddenly realized, hey, I can put the big kids in charge! I mean, they can handle breakfast and Saturday morning cartoons, right?
My oldest was deeply scandalized by this request. "You want me to feed everyone so that you can go sleep?" It should be noted here that my Firstborn has always considered sleep to be a weakness. Even as an infant, she slept less than the other children. Sometimes, her dad would come home from work and go straight to bed, and this also scandalized her. She'd demand, "Why is Dad asleep?" and she did not understand why the answer was, "Because he's tired." This made no sense to her.
"Yes. I'm tired. This is the fourth time I've been up to feed the baby since I went to bed. I'd appreciate it if you could feed the rest of you." Surely, this request made sense.
"Can't you make breakfast first?"
"I could, but I'm exhausted. By the time you're done with breakfast, the baby might be awake and hungry again." (The baby was breastfed; Mommy was the only possible feeder.)
"I can't believe that you want me to make breakfast!" Really, Kid? In actuality, I shouldn't have been surprised. Asking the kids to do anything resembling work elicited wailing, and complaints that all household jobs belonged to me, and I was just farming out the work because I was lazy and mean. Still, I was taken by surprise at the level of outrage she was showing over a simple task.
After a few more moments of back-and-forth, I snapped at her.
"It's cereal! If the three year old could reach the cupboards, he could do it himself!"
This stopped the complaining for just a moment, while it occurred to her that this was not a sentence of hard labor. Still, in her mind, it was clearly the mother's job.
Eventually, the 11 year old started looking through the cereal cupboard. The baby and I went upstairs to sleep.
The oldest still recounted the story to her friends in horror - "Mom slept, and I had to make breakfast," as though this demonstrated clear hardship.
It occurred to me that I wasn't asking them to help out nearly often enough if a simple pouring of cereal brought on such a ruckus.
As an adult, my Secondborn insisted that part of her getting ready for school routine was spoonfeeding the babies. "No," I corrected, "you and your sister sometimes fed them on weekends, but never on school mornings." School mornings were short enough on time without trying to get the big kids to do anything besides get dressed and feed themselves. But yes, I did ask them to help feed the siblings once the babies could eat in high chairs. Being part of a family means pitching in. Kids learn to be responsible by being given responsibility. Taking care of siblings also brings the siblings themselves closer.
She still isn't sure that I'm right about this. In her mind, it was so burdensome a task that it had to be every day.
"But sometimes, I was late to school."
"I know! That's because you dragged, and I had to cattle prod you through the mornings. That's exactly why you only fed the babies on weekends." (It's also why we had a "no TV in the mornings" rule; turn on the TV, and everybody ground to a halt.) She doesn't remember it that way.
At least, by the time she was in high school, she got ready in 15 minutes. Foodless minutes, but progress is progress.
Once they hit high school, I stopped making their breakfasts, in another attempt to teach responsibility and time management before they moved out of my house. I didn't want to send them away to college without them having done the basics for themselves. I still fought the "eat something!" battle. Many days, a glass of milk was all I'd get a child to consume before leaving, but it was something. I bought granola bars, string cheese, applesauce cups - all kinds of convenience food, but they rarely ate it. I said, out loud, that Oreos and milk would be acceptable, but nobody took me up on it. They were determined to skip breakfast, which makes me crazy. I'm hypoglycemic, so skipped meals are BAD. Plus, I'm a mom; I need to feed. Study after study shows weight gain, lower productivity, reduced concentration and lower job performance for breakfast skippers. It was maddening. In a nation brimming with both food and actual deprivation, and in a house full of food, should it be this hard to get people to eat?
Secondborn is in her late 20s, and after seeing something recently on TV about moms making breakfast, said, "You never made us breakfast."
"Not in high school," I said, sure that she was ignoring the actual meaning of the word "never."
"I don't remember you ever making breakfast."
"I did it for the first 14 years of your life, and I often had to fight to get you to eat it."
"Yeah, I hate breakfast. But I don't remember that." Wow. So glad that I spent all that time slicing, sprinkling, and buying stuff like Dinosaur Egg Instant Oatmeal.
When the Firstborn graduated from high school, she went to Hawaii with her two best friends. After we'd gotten the call saying that they'd landed safely, the Secondborn started to worry. "How will they eat?"
"You remember Honolulu. There's tons of places to eat."
"But how will they eat? What will they do when it's dinnertime?"
"They'll go to a restaurant, order food, pay for it and eat it." That seemed pretty obvious to me. I wondered if she was concerned that restaurants might not serve them, so I added, "They are legal adults, you know."
"But how will they know where to eat or what to eat?"
"They'll say, 'Hey, what do you want to eat?' and choose."
This conversation was sounding more and more bizarre to me. I'm sure that she was actually anxious because her sister, who'd been right next to her for her entire life, was now thousands of miles away, and after she came home, she would be preparing to move hundreds of miles away, so the anxiety wasn't actually about food, but food still seemed an odd thing for the anxiety to attach itself to. She wasn't worried that they'd be mugged, or get lost, or lose their luggage, or be assaulted, or miss their flight, or be on a plane that crashed, or miss their connecting flight home and be stuck in an airport in California, or anything else that was a much higher probability than starvation. No; she worried that three eighteen year olds with honors diplomas couldn't figure out how to feed themselves.
"They might get some stuff, especially for breakfasts, at a grocery store, too. That's cheaper than breakfast out." We've traveled a lot; I thought that how one fed one's self away from home would be familiar.
"What if they don't have enough money?"
Wow. "They'll have to figure out how much they can spend every day. But if something goes wrong, they have the credit card for emergencies."
"How will they know how much they can spend? How will they know if they can afford something?"
More wow. "If they can handle honors calculus, honors trigonometry and honors statistics, I think they can figure out how to make their cash last for a week. They can divide by seven."
"What if they can't?"
"Then they use the credit card."
"What if they lose the credit card?"
OK, this conversation would have made sense to me if I was having it with the seven year old, but this was the seventeen year old. "If they have reached the age of 18, and graduated from high school, without being able to feed themselves, we as parents have done a terrible job, and they'd better start catching up so they can be functional adults."
"I can't believe you're not even worried."
"Not about them feeding themselves!"
Then it occurred to me; this child usually worries based on things that she thinks might happen to her. "Do you think that you could feed yourself if we weren't there?"
"Me, yeah. I just don't know if she can."
Sisterly love.
As it turned out, by day seven, one girl had run out of cash, and the rice cakes she'd packed. The other two pooled their money and covered the third for those last meals. For instance, they bought 99 cent fruit and yogurt parfaits for breakfast, and ate them on Waikiki Beach. Go, girls!
The next year, when Secondborn went to Florida with her best friend on their graduation trip, everyone was fed, without much angst.
I still find myself having to cattle prod people to EAT at home. (Not literally - don't bother the authorities.) My household seems determined to skip meals. The Thirdborn averages two meals a day - he's an adult now - and the teenaged Fourthborn will go until midafternoon without eating, and then graze for the rest of the day, if I let her. My husband will be up for hours before he thinks about breakfast.
Is it me?
Is it them?
Should I have had the kids making breakfast, and dinner, for the whole family regularly, from an early age? Probably.
When my kids were little, I made breakfast for them every day. We only had the whole family at breakfast - at family meals, really, meals including all of us - when their dad had days off. He was working a rotating schedule of day shift, swing shift, graveyard shift, then back to day shift again. Weekends could be a day and a half, two days or four days (the rotation from graveyard back to days). When they were older, he worked steady hours, 3 am to 3 pm, which meant family dinner at about 5, but there was no way we were getting up at 2 am to have breakfast together.
I don't make elaborate meals. One of their favorite breakfasts was microwaved scrambled eggs and cinnamon toast. Another was sliced fruit, usually bananas and apples, in yogurt, topped with granola. We went through our fair share of cold cereal, oatmeal and Cream of Wheat, as well.
Once the kids were in school, I insisted that they be dressed before they came to breakfast. If we were running late, they could eat in the car on the way to school, but they couldn't get dressed or brush teeth in the car. This plan went pretty smoothly until they got a bit older. Then, obsessions with the "right" outfit, requests for fancy hairstyles and general dawdling meant that there was less and less time for breakfast. I resorted to toast, muffins or Pop Tarts in the car, until it became clear that I'd spend my days fishing untouched food out from under my seats. When I insisted that food be eaten at the table, even if it meant no fancy hair, there was much howling. I found myself thinking, "Are you kidding? You're upset because you're being fed? How is that even possible?" I even caved to them - and their dad - and bought cereals that were little more than spun sugar. They still griped.
By the time they hit middle school, in seventh grade, griping about "having to eat" was a pretty firmly established routine. It still astonished me. (Years later, I'm still astonished.) When they were asked to skip a meal for fasting with the church, or when meals were late on weekends or while traveling, they wailed about being "starving," yet they howled about being "not hungry" on school mornings. It had nothing to do with hunger, and everything to do with a power play. I even let them drench their oatmeal in syrup, or otherwise make sugar the main course, and they griped. Griping was a reflex action.
When the oldest kids were 12 and 11, and the third child was almost 4, we had Baby #4. One Saturday morning, when we were still measuring her age in days, the big kids were just waking up and coming down the stairs while the baby had just finished eating, and I was hoping to head back to bed. I resigned myself to more exhaustion when I suddenly realized, hey, I can put the big kids in charge! I mean, they can handle breakfast and Saturday morning cartoons, right?
My oldest was deeply scandalized by this request. "You want me to feed everyone so that you can go sleep?" It should be noted here that my Firstborn has always considered sleep to be a weakness. Even as an infant, she slept less than the other children. Sometimes, her dad would come home from work and go straight to bed, and this also scandalized her. She'd demand, "Why is Dad asleep?" and she did not understand why the answer was, "Because he's tired." This made no sense to her.
"Yes. I'm tired. This is the fourth time I've been up to feed the baby since I went to bed. I'd appreciate it if you could feed the rest of you." Surely, this request made sense.
"Can't you make breakfast first?"
"I could, but I'm exhausted. By the time you're done with breakfast, the baby might be awake and hungry again." (The baby was breastfed; Mommy was the only possible feeder.)
"I can't believe that you want me to make breakfast!" Really, Kid? In actuality, I shouldn't have been surprised. Asking the kids to do anything resembling work elicited wailing, and complaints that all household jobs belonged to me, and I was just farming out the work because I was lazy and mean. Still, I was taken by surprise at the level of outrage she was showing over a simple task.
After a few more moments of back-and-forth, I snapped at her.
"It's cereal! If the three year old could reach the cupboards, he could do it himself!"
This stopped the complaining for just a moment, while it occurred to her that this was not a sentence of hard labor. Still, in her mind, it was clearly the mother's job.
Eventually, the 11 year old started looking through the cereal cupboard. The baby and I went upstairs to sleep.
The oldest still recounted the story to her friends in horror - "Mom slept, and I had to make breakfast," as though this demonstrated clear hardship.
It occurred to me that I wasn't asking them to help out nearly often enough if a simple pouring of cereal brought on such a ruckus.
As an adult, my Secondborn insisted that part of her getting ready for school routine was spoonfeeding the babies. "No," I corrected, "you and your sister sometimes fed them on weekends, but never on school mornings." School mornings were short enough on time without trying to get the big kids to do anything besides get dressed and feed themselves. But yes, I did ask them to help feed the siblings once the babies could eat in high chairs. Being part of a family means pitching in. Kids learn to be responsible by being given responsibility. Taking care of siblings also brings the siblings themselves closer.
She still isn't sure that I'm right about this. In her mind, it was so burdensome a task that it had to be every day.
"But sometimes, I was late to school."
"I know! That's because you dragged, and I had to cattle prod you through the mornings. That's exactly why you only fed the babies on weekends." (It's also why we had a "no TV in the mornings" rule; turn on the TV, and everybody ground to a halt.) She doesn't remember it that way.
At least, by the time she was in high school, she got ready in 15 minutes. Foodless minutes, but progress is progress.
Once they hit high school, I stopped making their breakfasts, in another attempt to teach responsibility and time management before they moved out of my house. I didn't want to send them away to college without them having done the basics for themselves. I still fought the "eat something!" battle. Many days, a glass of milk was all I'd get a child to consume before leaving, but it was something. I bought granola bars, string cheese, applesauce cups - all kinds of convenience food, but they rarely ate it. I said, out loud, that Oreos and milk would be acceptable, but nobody took me up on it. They were determined to skip breakfast, which makes me crazy. I'm hypoglycemic, so skipped meals are BAD. Plus, I'm a mom; I need to feed. Study after study shows weight gain, lower productivity, reduced concentration and lower job performance for breakfast skippers. It was maddening. In a nation brimming with both food and actual deprivation, and in a house full of food, should it be this hard to get people to eat?
Secondborn is in her late 20s, and after seeing something recently on TV about moms making breakfast, said, "You never made us breakfast."
"Not in high school," I said, sure that she was ignoring the actual meaning of the word "never."
"I don't remember you ever making breakfast."
"I did it for the first 14 years of your life, and I often had to fight to get you to eat it."
"Yeah, I hate breakfast. But I don't remember that." Wow. So glad that I spent all that time slicing, sprinkling, and buying stuff like Dinosaur Egg Instant Oatmeal.
When the Firstborn graduated from high school, she went to Hawaii with her two best friends. After we'd gotten the call saying that they'd landed safely, the Secondborn started to worry. "How will they eat?"
"You remember Honolulu. There's tons of places to eat."
"But how will they eat? What will they do when it's dinnertime?"
"They'll go to a restaurant, order food, pay for it and eat it." That seemed pretty obvious to me. I wondered if she was concerned that restaurants might not serve them, so I added, "They are legal adults, you know."
"But how will they know where to eat or what to eat?"
"They'll say, 'Hey, what do you want to eat?' and choose."
This conversation was sounding more and more bizarre to me. I'm sure that she was actually anxious because her sister, who'd been right next to her for her entire life, was now thousands of miles away, and after she came home, she would be preparing to move hundreds of miles away, so the anxiety wasn't actually about food, but food still seemed an odd thing for the anxiety to attach itself to. She wasn't worried that they'd be mugged, or get lost, or lose their luggage, or be assaulted, or miss their flight, or be on a plane that crashed, or miss their connecting flight home and be stuck in an airport in California, or anything else that was a much higher probability than starvation. No; she worried that three eighteen year olds with honors diplomas couldn't figure out how to feed themselves.
"They might get some stuff, especially for breakfasts, at a grocery store, too. That's cheaper than breakfast out." We've traveled a lot; I thought that how one fed one's self away from home would be familiar.
"What if they don't have enough money?"
Wow. "They'll have to figure out how much they can spend every day. But if something goes wrong, they have the credit card for emergencies."
"How will they know how much they can spend? How will they know if they can afford something?"
More wow. "If they can handle honors calculus, honors trigonometry and honors statistics, I think they can figure out how to make their cash last for a week. They can divide by seven."
"What if they can't?"
"Then they use the credit card."
"What if they lose the credit card?"
OK, this conversation would have made sense to me if I was having it with the seven year old, but this was the seventeen year old. "If they have reached the age of 18, and graduated from high school, without being able to feed themselves, we as parents have done a terrible job, and they'd better start catching up so they can be functional adults."
"I can't believe you're not even worried."
"Not about them feeding themselves!"
Then it occurred to me; this child usually worries based on things that she thinks might happen to her. "Do you think that you could feed yourself if we weren't there?"
"Me, yeah. I just don't know if she can."
Sisterly love.
As it turned out, by day seven, one girl had run out of cash, and the rice cakes she'd packed. The other two pooled their money and covered the third for those last meals. For instance, they bought 99 cent fruit and yogurt parfaits for breakfast, and ate them on Waikiki Beach. Go, girls!
The next year, when Secondborn went to Florida with her best friend on their graduation trip, everyone was fed, without much angst.
I still find myself having to cattle prod people to EAT at home. (Not literally - don't bother the authorities.) My household seems determined to skip meals. The Thirdborn averages two meals a day - he's an adult now - and the teenaged Fourthborn will go until midafternoon without eating, and then graze for the rest of the day, if I let her. My husband will be up for hours before he thinks about breakfast.
Is it me?
Is it them?
Should I have had the kids making breakfast, and dinner, for the whole family regularly, from an early age? Probably.
Sunday, August 2, 2015
Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother
From my Facebook page:
Someone asked people to post good parental advice on their page. Here's stuff I learned from my Mom. What's your good advice?
You don't need validation from others to be sure that you're doing the right thing.
You can be the smartest person in the room without being a gloating arrogant a** about it, or even pointing it out.
Always give a kid a ride.
Love your kids' friends.
Trust your kids if they've earned it; watch them like a hawk if they haven't.
Be good at what you do because it's the right thing to do and will make you feel good, but don't expect others to notice or appreciate it.
Go outside as much as you can.
Read.
Eat it or wear it. (The family joke ;D)
(I'm the little bald one.)
For Mother's Day, I shared wisdom from my mom. For Father's Day, here's some of what I learned from my dad.
1. Line up the sights before you pull the trigger: This was very literal advice, as my dad was a shooting coach, and I was competent with a gun while my age was still in single digits. It's great metaphorical advice, too. I sometimes want to jump into things without lining things up, and I know that it won't work as well.
2. Fishing wisdom: I can look at a stream or lake and tell you where the fish will be. I can catch them in a tiny trickle of a stream or a deep mountain lake. I know how to rest the line on a sensitive fingertip in order to feel nibbles. I can set the hook. I have homemade bait recipes, I can clean and cook fish, I can cast, I can keep a reel from tangling. I can feed myself, as long as there's water nearby.
Fishing was what my dad and I did together, without the rest of the family. One of his favorite stories from my childhood was "the time Ainsley put you out of the boat." He'd tell it and roar with laughter, no matter how many times he'd already told it. Ainsley was one of Dad's - our - fishing buddies. One day on Frenchmen's, I announced that I had a bite before either man had one. "No, you don't. They're not biting today. You're feeling the bait bump the bottom," Ainsley said. Moments later, I pulled in a nice sized trout.
This continued - "I have a bite!" "No, you don't!" followed by reeling in a fish - until I had caught my limit. Neither man in the boat had gotten a single bite yet. Competitive Ainsley was so miffed that he found a tiny island to leave me on until HE'D caught his limit. I watched the boat go back and forth, back and forth - it was Ainsley's boat, and he wasn't letting me back in until we were even.
Dad loved that story.
3. You don't have to be a parent to parent a child: he helped raise his niece while he was a single man. She called him Unc instead of the more cumbersome Uncle Everett. "He needed a three letter nickname, just like Dad," she explained. He held the same place in her life as her own father - which also taught me that kids can have more than two "real" parents.
4. Do your job to the best of your ability, even if others stop short: The thing my dad did that made me proudest happened before I was born. He worked for the Sparks Fire Department. A fire broke out at the jail - an old style jail, with caged cells and a big iron loop of big, iron keys to open the locks. The fire was so fierce that most responders refused to enter the building, saying that the prisoners had to have already succumbed to smoke, and to risk any men would be foolhardy. Only two people, my dad and one police officer, were willing to venture into the burning jail to let the prisoners out. Those two saved every one of the prisoners.
There were articles in the paper, commendations, awards from service clubs. Dad shrugged them all off. "I was just doing my job. I wasn't going to let men burn to death in cages."
I now own his uniform cap and the awards that hung above the desk during my childhood. None of my kids remember my dad - two never met him, the others were infants when he died - but they know this story.
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