Snapshots

One of my favorite pictures of my dad and I is one that was taken when I was about 4 years old. In it my dad and I are at the park on the swings swinging like a spider. I am sitting on my dad's lap facing him, my long legs splayed out opposite his. We are relatively high up in the air and both leaning backwards, our long hair swinging in the breeze. We have laughter on our faces. If a picture really was worth a thousand words then youthful, joyful, happy, loving, and all of their synonyms would be used to describe it. These words would also describe the relationship that my dad and I had then and still have now.

My dad was only 21 when I was born, still a child himself. My parents lived in married housing at Eastern Michigan University in an apartment so small that before they had a crib they used to place me in a dresser drawer to sleep. I was not an easy baby, for I had colic and cried a lot. I also cried when my dad held me and am told that I didn't seem to like him when I was younger. Lucky for me I changed my mind and also lucky for me my dad didn't hold it against me.

One of the things I love most about my dad is that he loves to laugh and doesn't take life too seriously, even when the joke's on him, which it is all too often because he is extremely gullible. I have turned out to be his clone ("Like father, like daughter," my mom always says), and am always doing silly things. Because of Dad I have learned to laugh at myself and my life has been much easier (and more joyful) because of it.

Dad tries to inject any situation with joy when warranted. We have a special tree out by Oakland University that we have visited for 35 years (we call it our tree, although I know that many other people probably claim it as theirs too). This giant oak tree stands out in the middle of a field and the only way to reach it is to go down a slight hill and up another. Most people would walk this path, but not Dad and I. We frolic, bounding down that hill in long, high jumps, our elbows and knees making right angles in sync, laughing and giggling the whole way.

My mother may have given me her love of reading, but my father instilled in me his love of music. Music makes my dad and I happy. He and his friends would spend hours making the equivalent of a mixed tape on a reel-to-reel-player, perfecting each song's pitch and tone. I have fond memories of singing along with Aerosmith's Train Kept A-Rolling in the backseat of our car, although my version went like this: "Playin' pepperoni all night long...", or to Chicago's We Can Make It Happen (my version: We Can Make a Napkin). Dad would always quiz me in the car too: "What song is this, Jen?". I got quite good at naming songs and bands, partly because Dad gave me a great incentive: "I'll give you a banana split if you can name this band..." Which reminds me - Dad I think you still owe me about 10 banana splits!

As I grew up and changed from child to teen to adult, the role Dad played in my life changed too. He's played the parts of protector, provider, teacher, equal, and now grandfather. Our relationship hasn't always been roses, for when I was a teenager there was a period in which I went through what my dad calls "The Parents Don't Know Shit" stage and we didn't like each other very much. Thankfully those memories are fleeting and have been superseded by other images:

Snapshot: Riding shotgun with Dad.  It is a sunny summer evening in our old neighborhood, a townhouse complex in Rochester where all the kids run around in packs and the parents don't worry about their safety. Dad and I are on his bike, me in the baby seat behind him. Mom is on her bike in front of us. We glide along with the cool breeze on our faces. I can hardly breathe at times we are going so fast and the speed of it all steals my breath. Then we are at the top of the hill, looking down. Dad says to me, "Ready Co-pilot?" "Ready Pilot," I answer. We both raise our arms to the sky. Then Dad shoots down that hill steering the bike with his knees and we scream with abandon and delight the whole way down.

Snapshot: She can ride with a little help from her dad. I am sitting astride my first two-wheel bike with its banana seat and basket up front. My dad is behind me, holding onto the back of the seat, my cushion of safety. "Ready Pilot?" he asks. "Ready, Copilot," I answer with all the excited courage I can muster. I put my feet on the pedals and off we go, father and daughter wobbling along for several feet until I can manage to straighten out the wheel. Then he lets go of the back of the seat and I continue pedaling on my own. "You're doing it! You're doing it!" he yells to me. "I'm doing it, I'm doing it, I'm riding by myself!" I yell back. I'm so thrilled with myself that I don't notice that the smile on my dad's face is bursting with pride, much like that on my own face.

Snapshot: Piloting together. It's a sunny summer evening, my favorite time of day. Dad and I are on our bikes in the driveway of the house we moved to after I graduated from high school. We are two long and lean figures who closely resemble each other both in looks and in mannerisms. I turn to Dad. "Ready Pilot?" I ask. "Ready Pilot," he answers. And we ride off in tandem, stride matching stride.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there, but especially to my own. You have made such a difference in my life, Dad. I love you!!!

On Children

In honor of Mother's Day I'm posting a poem by Kahlil Gibran about children and their relationship with their parents. Enjoy and Happy Mother's Day to all!!

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

          Kahlil Gibran

A group called Sweet Honey In the Rock made a beautiful song out of this poem. Here's the song put to a heartwarming slideshow. Tip: get some Kleenex first!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8154859559953363340#

Michael the Toothless Wonder

Michael became a toothless wonder today. That’s right, he can now sing the song “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth”. We were eating dinner when his second top tooth fell out, the tooth that, to me, is the last vestige of babyhood. Gone, just like the baby that slipped into this world silent and observant, now replaced by a 47-inch boy who is no longer silent but still very observant.

I knew this day would come but didn’t realize how much I was dreading it. In addition to the whole my-boy-is-growing-up-and-away-from-me thing, there’s the adult teeth thing. When baby teeth come in they usually come in straight and nice and to me nothing beats a smile from a young child. When adult teeth come in it’s a different story. There are issues of overcrowding and teeth coming in crooked or not at all. Poor Michael has no idea what he’s in store for. Due to the fact that both sides of his family genes carry the bad teeth genome, he is a candidate for all three scenarios.

The Case Against Kindergarten

When I gave birth to my second son Nicholas in late October of 2005, my mom, an early childhood educator, warned me that my husband and I would have a tough choice to make when it was time for him to go to kindergarten. "In my profession we often recommend to parents of children with fall birthdays to wait a year before kindergarten so they have that extra time to mature and grow," she told me.

As I looked down at my newborn I couldn't imagine what he would be like in one year, much less 5 years. That seemed so far away and I said that we'd just have to cross that bridge when we came to it.

Well, now it's almost 5 years later and it is indeed time to cross that bridge. My mom was right: we have a big decision to make - to send Nicholas to kindergarten in the fall or wait a year and send him to a young five or pre-kindergarten program first.

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays! As I sit down to write my annual Christmas letter, it is December 20, 2009, and my house is a wreck, I’m tired from power shopping today, I still have a stash of gifts in the car that I need to bring in the house, and I have yet to wrap any gifts. I have a list of Christmas activities and projects that I want to do with my children now that they’re on break but know that we’re never going to fit it all into 4 short days. I’m tempted to not write this letter at all, but cannot do it because it would break tradition, and to me that’s an important part of Christmas: Tradition.

When we began to decorate the house the morning after Thanksgiving, that’s tradition. And when we went to a Christmas tree farm to cut down a fresh Blue Spruce tree to put up in our living room like we did this year, that’s tradition (although it seems that our “traditional tree” keeps getting larger each year – 7 feet our first year, 10 feet last year, 12 feet this year!). As we bake gingerbread men, snowballs, and sugar cookies in Christmas shapes (that we have partially done this year), that’s tradition. As Christmas approaches and I begin to feel stressed that THERE IS NOT ENOUGH TIME LEFT! and begin to pull out my hair, that too, unfortunately, is tradition!

Writing Down My Daughter

Having a girl has always been my great dream. I always thought I would have a girl first, a firstborn daughter like I was to my mother. Instead I had a boy. For awhile he was my everything. Then when he was 1 ½ I found out I was pregnant again. My hopes for a girl returned. One of each and our family would be complete, I thought. But, as fate dictated, I had another boy. Initially I was disappointed but soon the overwhelming task of taking care of two children under the age of 2 ½ buried my desire for a girl.

Over the years I’ve always answered the question whether we were going to have another child and try for a girl with an emphatic “No!” My husband and I like the one child per adult ratio. But this year when I turned 40 something happened. My body began to fail me. I was plagued with illness, fatigue, irregular menstrual cycles, intense PMS, and depression. I realized that I was entering perimenopause, the time when the body prepares for the cessation of menses. The time when fertility slows down and then stops.

I felt out of touch with myself and my body. I knew something was amiss but just couldn’t put my finger on it. The last four years of mothering had stomped on and trampled over the spark that was me. I felt like there was a foreigner stationed in my body and somewhere inside was a vibrant, energetic being waiting to be remembered. Ever since my 40^th birthday lost dreams and desires had come knocking on my door demanding to be let out.

Meet Nicholas the 4-year-old

It was a cloudy morning on October 20, 2005, as Nicholas Jeffrey slipped into this world, loudly proclaiming himself present with cries and wails fit for a tiny warrior. Even though his labor was much shorter and less painful than his older brother's, his entrance made me pause. He seemed angry, and this reaction is not what I had been expecting from this child that I had nurtured and carried with joy inside my womb.

"This one's going to give me a run for my money," I thought to myself.

Four years later I can tell you with an emphatic "OH YEAH!" that I was right. Boy, was I ever.

Right from the get go he knew what he wanted and would only settle for that one thing: ME. Daddy wouldn't do, Grandma wouldn't do, Grandpa wouldn't do. Only mom. When Michael was an infant I could leave him with almost anyone and run to the store just to get out of the house and he would be just as happy when I returned as when I left. Not Nicholas. He would begin crying when I left and when I got back he would be screaming, his poor little face beet red and flooded with tears. Needless to say, I didn't get out much when he was little. Wait, what am I talking about? I didn't get out much for the first 3 years of his life!!