New personal essay

My latest, After the Fourth, is available starting today at Curator magazine. An excerpt:

The days surrounding July 4^th normally trumpet the ease of summer, but this year’s music is different. It was Tuesday, the fifth of July, when the horns gave way to the unrelenting beat of the future.

A careful listener would have heard the cues sooner. On Friday, my oldest went away with a buddy and his family. We packed my boy’s things and wrote down all the phone numbers. His dad and I spoke out of both sides of our mouths, reminding him to call if anything made him uncomfortable and assuring him that everything would be fine.

Thump, thump.

Saturday the wind and rain washed the rhythm away, but it returned on Sunday, pulsing as I came up the stairs and saw Connor in combat boots and camouflage...

Read the whole story here.

Free

Free, I often say, is my favorite price. It is also a fine condition, as The Soup Dragons recognized in the 1990's.




When you're a kid, 'free to do what you want' is the stuff worthy of a quest. One of my kids was dreaming of freedom. Sadly, the dream eliminated me:

What if we didn't have parents, what if your were dead? the child said with enthusiasm.
You would want that? I asked.
Yes! the child said. Then I could do whatever I wanted.
What would you do? I asked.
Paint the walls, the child said.

A little disconcerting that my little one would string me up for a couple of gallons of Benjamin Moore, but the child will learn of love; and I, for my part, will buy paint.

"You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love." -Galatians 5:13



This is a part of my "a song a day" writing, which do not always occur daily. I'm working on it. Un-naturalism and Rebel Yell came first. For a fictional dialogue on parenting, try A Mom's Burden.

A Mom's Burden - fictional dialogue

 “I can’t take a shower,” she said.

“Why not?” said her husband, from the other room.

“Something might happen to him,” she replied. She meant the baby.

“But it’s been 3 months,” said her husband.

“I know, and he’s still here, right. He’s still alive, right? So,” she said rationally, “it’s working.”

Her husband took a deep breath. “Honey, you need to take care of yourself.”

“What? No. My children come first.”

The look on her face told him that this should have been obvious.

“We just have the one,” he said.

“Well, I hope to have more,” she replied. Her expression didn’t change.

He grinned. “Not going to happen if you smell like that.”

Nothing. He tried another tactic.

“I’ll tell you what, I’ll watch him, you go get cleaned up.”

She stared deep in his eyes with a bemused contempt.

“What?” he said.

“Well,” she began, “how often will you hold him?”

“Huh?”

“How often?” She paused, then answered herself. “17 minutes. That’s what the book says. 17 minutes is the optimal gap in between holdings. I pick up the baby every 17 minutes.”

“What if you have something else to do?”

Her hair shook. “I set it aside for the good of my baby.”

A timer on her watch went off. She pushed the button, and gave her husband a little nod. She picked up the baby, counted to 20 and set the baby back down.

 “Next time, I have to say the alphabet. The time after that I will sing Twinkle Twinkle. Good for geometry skills later.”

He was speechless.

“Because that’s Mozart, you know." She picked up THE parenting book and waved it. "There’s a way to do things John.” 

“Let me see that.”

“Sure. If you’d like, I could buy you a copy, and you could start reading it. Like I asked. Six months ago.”

“I just saw this, but with a different cover,” he said

“Marketing ploy.”

“I’m not so sure,” he said.

“Yeah, whatever.”

He pulled out his iPhone. “Oh, look, there’s a new edition of the book. Hmm – ‘one of the more surprising changes is the new optimal time for babies to be held. It has gone from 17 minutes to 13 minutes.’”

“What?”

“I guess the world’s moving faster now, so …”

She began to pace, nearly tripping over the baby. She didn't even notice. John picked him up. “Oh no, John, what am I going to do? I’m behind! Now he’s going to be a serial killer, I just know it. He’s going to be the bully, and pull wings off of flies and fry ants with magnifying glasses and -"

He rolled his eyes. “I did that.”

“Great – now he’ll be genetically AND environmentally predisposed to psychopathy …”

His eyes got bigger. “Honey, I was just …”

There was no stopping her. “Or worse, he’ll become a socialist!”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

She started rubbing her hands together to keep from twirling her hair. “Oh, I’m not being ridiculous, John, we can’t let him become a socialist." She looked down, and the baby was gone. "See - it's already started! He's gone." 

“What? He's right here."

“Ahh! What are you doing? Give him to me. NOW!”

“What? Why?”

“I’m going to make up for lost time . . . let’s see, he’s three months and 6 days, and every seventeen minutes compared to every thirteen minutes in a 12 hour period would be . . . Oh John, help me.”

“You’re on your own, sister.”

The timer went off.

“I’ve fallen short again. Will I ever get anything right? I’m doomed,” she cried.

Worth

I appreciate the older lady who smiled at me yesterday as we watched my four-year old in the dairy aisle, sporting a crooked flower in her hair, a dirty pink sweatshirt, denim skorts and raggedy cowboy boots.

Her own daughter, she remembered, had a pair of red boots. Donned them with everything. The woman’s very own sister gave her a hard time about it, the old, ‘if that were my kid, she wouldn’t be doing that’.

I laughed. Then the lady told me that the boots were nothing. Her daughter also wanted long hair, but it wouldn’t grow in right. So this woman made her little girl yarn hair, and her daughter wore  the wig everywhere - to the store, wherever. The daughter had even acquired the habit of nonchalantly flipping the strands out of her face as she shopped.

There’s so much more to worry about in the world, the grandma-type said. People are dying.

It reminded me of what my very own sister, a nurse, always says. To paraphrase, if it’s life or death, then there ought to be protocol. The rest of the time, relax.

–

Lately, I’ve been talking with lots of friends about what we can glean about God from our experience as parents.

One of the things we shouldn’t put on a kid is our own worth. An important boundary, I think. It puts an inappropriate pressure on the child to perform. I’ve seen children crumble under the weight of their parents, under a parent’s need. Kids need to understand that we have expectations, but our value is not wrapped up in their meeting of our expectations.

So it is with God – God’s value and worth is not wrapped up in me, or my ability to do what’s right. He IS. I think that is another facet of the story of the Canaanite woman who comes to Jesus on behalf of her demon-possessed daughter (Matthew 15:21-28 – a part of the sermon I heard this Sunday). Jesus uses words that might lead people to believe that the woman is nothing, a dog. Why does she take the term and embrace it, using it to continue to ask for help?

She believes that Jesus can and will save her child – He declares her faith great. But alongside this faith, I can’t help but think about her love. Being called a name was apparently of no consequence compared to freedom for her child.

The value of every person in this world is set at the same price: worth dying for. To grab my worth from anything else cheapens me, burdens others and worst, defrauds God.