more normal than not

I was thinking about children yesterday.

We have a new baby.

I was thinking about how children change your life.

When we had our first child, we were a young married couple.

Actually, Jenny was younger than me then by about 10 years…but we hadn’t been married long so I guess that we were a “young couple”.

Our relationship was in its “youthful stages”.

When we had our first child, everything was new.

We had an idea of how things would go.  We had an idea of what to do.

Of course, people who really know what to do don’t move into a gutted house when the baby is…what?….6 weeks old.

That was my idea!

That’s another story.

I was thinking about babies and getting your act together and I realized something.

The first baby is kind of like a really demanding “dolly”.

He or she is able to be corralled. It’s an occasionally controllable situation.

Unless you’re a new Daddy, changing a diaper on the hood of a 1973 Plymouth Valiant (that’s parked, of course)….changing that diaper without enough wet wipes…changing a historically huge blowout on a finely patinated surface…..unless that’s happening, you’re going to be OK.

If you’ve read a few books, listened to your Momma some, paid attention to other parents…learned from other people’s efforts….then you’re probably going to be OK.

You can have fun with the new dolly.

We had our second child 14 months after our first.

People said that it was going to be different.

I thought, “Of course it will be different…there’ll be two babies. Two is different than one.”

“No…”, they said…”you’ll see soon….it will be different.”

I guess that they were right.

What I soon figured out is that having two children isn’t like having an additional “hard dolly”.

Having two children is like trying to run on two separate treadmills at the same time.

I don’t know that you ever really figure it out.

I read some books…I watched and listened…I paid attention to what I was supposed to be doing.

I tried to get it right.

E…ve….ry….day.

And no matter how many times those two treadmills threw me, I always got back up and started trying to run again….straddling and stumbling, timing each footfall for the next “throw-down”…hoping for the perfect synchronicity I was learning would never come.

I don’t think I’ll every get it completely right…but I sure have gotten a lot more comfortable with knowing that I might get some of it wrong.

I don’t think I’ll ever be the parent I was before we had our children, though.

I really had my game together when all I had to worry about was all the good advice floating around in my brain.

Untested theoretical knowledge is a beautiful thing.  It can be so peaceful. It feels so right.

Children force the new math…when 1+1 becomes something so different than just “2”, you really do have to re-examine all your paradigms.

It’s different every time, too.

I don’t want to keep exploring all the different combinations, though. Being a parent isn’t some weird science experiment.

I’ll work at figuring out the combination we’ve cooked up so far.

We don’t need to add to the mix.

Jenny probably agrees.

Time to go warm up the treadmills.

I don’t get a lot of time off from my job.

Even when I was only working for the Post Office part-time as a substitute driver, it was awkward to get big chunks of my life open to do important things.

So when we did anything “epic”…and I was able to get some time to myself and my family…we might have pushed a little harder than if I was just meandering like I’d like to do.

The first time we drove out West to visit my wife’s family in Colorado, we rented a car and just kept driving.

We pointed the vehicle “left” on the map, and didn’t “stop going” until we couldn’t go anymore.

We didn’t have much time. Time was valuable. If I didn’t sleep…and just could stay awake and drive…and drive….and drive….and drive…then maybe we could get there quickly and somehow cram a couple of months worth of visit into an “almost two-week” trip.

I finally ran out of gas (figuratively…the car was OK and was ready for more.  It was me who couldn’t handle anymore forcing my eyes to stay open) in a town called Shamrock.

Shamrock, Texas.  Home of the Shamrock Inn and its 14 item breakfast buffet, included with each nights stay.

That ratty old motel was like a little slice of heaven…with a small “h”, of course.

I wonder how many places like that become a part of a family’s mythology just because of their proximity to a new adventure?

It was the Forrest Gump of roadside oasis’. It has a permanent place in our history because it was around when we needed it…and it was kind of weird.

We don’t talk about any of the nice places we’ve stayed at in our travels.

We’ve been fortunate to stay at some nice places.  They were appreciated at the time. We recognized luxury when it was presented to us.

But none of these “nice places” are as memorable as places like the Shamrock Inn.

We joke now that if you have a fair number of condiments…or a couple of different types of syrup for the pancakes…that you can bump up a few offerings into the “mega-buffet” status.

Four items can become 14 if you describe it correctly.

It felt so good to stop in Shamrock.

It was right to get to lay down for a while.

Caffeine and adrenaline can only get you so far.

“Rest” was worth a hundred of my kingdoms that night.

Now I’m going to let my “metaphorical comet” round Earth and head back out into space.

What if…and everything is a “what if” when you get down to brass tacks, even the past is a “what if” when we have a chance to try and figure out what “really happened”…what if Heaven (with a capital ‘H’….the big Heaven) was really the ultimate place of rest?

What if Heaven was the restful comfort we’ll never know on this Earth…and it never misrepresented the buffet, either?

I AM JUST SAYING.  I’m just sayin’.

For all our conjecture and “ologies”, maybe Heaven is just a place to rest….and a place to be “with”.

A place to be “with” sounds good to me.

Until I get a chance to “pull over and turn off the ignition”, I’ll have to be content with remembering how good it felt to open the door to our little room in Shamrock, Texas all those years ago.

It felt good to rest.

 

It’s raining this morning.

That means that I’ll get to give my new thrift store Goretex a workout today…see if the reason someone donated it is that it leaks…and not just because it’s purple.

I watched a show about ginseng poachers last night.

We have guys who poach ‘sang around here, too.

I didn’t realize how profitable it could be to steal ginseng.  They were paying these guys on the show around 550 dollars per pound for the stuff they were bringing in.

You could get rich digging in the woods.

I watched about half an hour of the show and realized that I better get to sleep…it was getting late…I better sleep.

Learning about guys digging up ginseng wasn’t worth being that tired in the morning.

We have a credit card that gives an annual statement.  It breaks down when and where we’ve spent all our money.  It categorizes it.  I think it even has some pretty expressive graphics and maybe even some flow charts.

It’s pretty impressive to see where the money went.

When it’s gone, it feels like I must have dropped it off into a black hole somewhere…but when I see the charts, I can know that the bulk of it went for gas…or food….or….

I don’t really remember what the charts say.

What if we had a year-end rundown of all the ways we spent our time?

That would be pretty crazy.

I don’t think I’d want to see a chart that included things like “watched half hour of show about ginseng poaching”.

I don’t want to know that watching a show like that might be one of the more constructive ways I used my time.

I think it would probably bother me if someone was paying attention to the ways I use my time…I know I don’t like to…it would bug me if someone handed me a chart at the end of the year.

It is something to think about, though.

( I’d like a “flow” chart, though.  If I could see all the times that I was in a state of “flow”, I’d like that. I’d like to beat my numbers the next year…remain in a constant state of “flow”.  I’d like that.)

I don’t have any idea of the big financial picture…well, that’s not completely true…I do keep a running log in my head, but it’s mostly stuff like, “Man, we’re spending some money on gas this year” or “when did bananas get so expensive?”…I don’t get the whole picture until I see a pie-chart.

I surely don’t have any idea of how I spend my time until I look back and think (or see) where it all went.

It’s like those naps where you think, “I’ll just lay down for a minute” and wake up groggy a couple of hours later.

All these little moments that I give up…sitting in front of the television, “actively” watching a show about dudes with decent beards sneaking for the ‘sang…I don’t get any of that time back.

I can’t say, “Nahhhhhhhh…not. No.  I want a ‘buy-back’….that was a waste. That wasn’t a good deal…that show stunk.  I would like a do-over…give me back that little chunk of life energy.”

” I feel RIPPPPPPPPPPEDOFFFFFFFFFFFFFF”.

It never works like that.

The minutes I give away in unnoticeable little chunks are gone down that black hole in the ground, with no hope of a chance of getting them back.

They’re gone without a hope of ever seeing a pie-chart warning sign.

And I will do it again.  I will sit and watch HoneyBooBoo for the first time, and say, “This is that show that everybody talks about.”

Maybe the secret to a fulfilled life is figuring out how to do something vital on the peripheries of all the time-wasting?

Maybe the secret is to figure out how to stop wasting the minutes we’re given in the first place.

Did you know, though, that you can make a lot of money digging up the roots?

There’s gold in them thar hills.

I must be desperate to be entertained…or confused…or infuriated.

I listened to talk radio again yesterday on the route.

Maybe I just needed something to take my mind off the cold, I don’t really know….but for the 5 hours I was on the road, I listened to people talk about the same kind of stuff they were talking about 10 years ago.

Different faces…same situations.

One of the things they were talking about was the extension of jobless benefits.

After a fairly long period of aid…and I guess an extension or two already…some folk’s benefits are getting ready to expire.

So the politicians are fighting to get some money where it’s “desperately needed”.

I listened to a Senator from Nevada talk about how it’s only right that we help these people who’ve been out of work for so long…we need to support them in their efforts to stay afloat during hard times.

I couldn’t help but think that there is a big divide between compassion that grows out of a shared experience…and “compassion” that comes from a need to position yourself so that you might get some votes on down the line.

I picture these politicians somewhere…enjoying their club sandwiches at the “club”…getting around to talking about the subject of the poor…and deciding that, yes, we need to help these people…and then moving on to the next topic or the next bite of their sandwich.

These guys don’t have a dime in it…except for the desire to get re-elected, they wouldn’t give a flip what happens to these strangers who aren’t enjoying a club sandwich with them.

It’s hard enough to give a flip about the guys they’re having lunch with.

I may be way off base supposing that I know anything about the motivations that these career criminals politicians have.  I don’t know their hearts…I don’t know how deep their sense of caring goes.

I don’t know these men.

So to pass any judgement might be unfair.

Maybe if they went into office with the understanding that they wouldn’t benefit financially or personally, that they’d be toiling in relative obscurity emptying bedpans or wiping down shopping cart handles, that they’d be servants without extreme compensation…given 90’s era Toyotas to drive as their government vehicles….that they’d be angels of mercy to the poor and that they could really make a difference if they just accepted the call to serve… maybe if I knew that was the deal they’d brokered…maybe I’d feel more confident that their compassion ran deep.

Maybe if political office was like jury duty…like they were conscripted to serve…given 14 dollars a day to do it…but it was a long-term commitment, like 4 or 8 or 32 years…maybe then I’d feel like these guys were really open to having a servants heart.

I’m one to talk, though….I live in a little glass cabin in the woods…I shouldn’t throw a bunch of rocks at these guys just because I thought it was weird that they were working so hard at getting the benefits fired up again.

99 weeks is a long time already, right?

What’s the Asian phrase?  “Kitanai, kiken, kitsui” ….that’s it.  I had it on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t quite remember the middle word. ( I’m kidding…I googled it…I couldn’t remember something like that.)

That’s a phrase that means something like “dirty, dangerous, and demanding”….talking about jobs that people might be hesitant to do because they are hard.

Maybe all the “bad” jobs have dried up, too?  I know there were a bunch of bad jobs out there before I started working with the USPS…I had a few, so I know.

Maybe there aren’t any jobs out there? I have a job right now…I haven’t had to look for a job for a while…so I really don’t know what other people’s experience is lately.

When someone with a government jet and a big expense account debates how to dole out charity with the money we give them…or, maybe more realistically, that they take from us…it kind of bugs me.

What else is new? Stuff bugs me sometimes.

Our daughter ran cross-country and track the year before she started high school.

From what I could tell, she had a good time doing it.

At that point in my postal career, I may have still been a relief driver…so I probably had some time that felt like mine.

I wasn’t working all the time yet.

I’d go to her meets…and I got to see her run.

I remember this one track meet that she ran in at her school.

The coach had her running in a couple of events…seems like she was running in the mile and two-mile races…maybe the 800 meter race, too.  I guess the “mile” and “two-mile” races might have been 1500 and 3000 meter races….I don’t really remember.

I think that Zoe must share some of the same genetic material that I am made of.

She’s a good runner.  Little and strong, she just keeps going.

I guess that I’m kind of like that, too.

She’s kind of an “upper middle of the pack” kind of runner….just like me, also.

I don’t remember any of her finish times or where she placed in the group. I don’t remember any trophies.

Like me, I don’t remember her winning any trophies.

I do remember this one race, though.

It was probably the 1500.

There were a couple of other schools participating, so I remember that it seemed like there were a lot of kids running in this race.

It was crowded.

I stood near the finish line on the track.

I could see the whole race from where I stood, but when the runners were on the other side of the oval, they were fairly far away.

Something happened that day, somebody must have tripped in the group, because from where I stood I could see that maybe a third of the 20 runners had fallen on the track.

You couldn’t see who it was that had fallen.

There were a lot of young girls down…some hurt.

We all watched from our side of the field to see what would happen.

And then one runner was up again and running.

I could see that it was Zoe.

I don’t know if it was only the adrenalin …or some kind of competitive spirit…or pride…or what it was that made her get up and keep running…but of all the girls who fell, she was the only one who got up and finished the race.

Scraped and bruised, she was the one who kept going.

Our children, hopefully, have achievements and victories in their lives.

Sometimes parents enjoy the achievements of their children because of how it reflects on the parents.

Kind of like a “See what I did?  See what I made?” moment where we can show the world what our efforts produced. 

On some level, the child shares the victory with the parent… sometimes.

That’s not always right.

Runners fell, one got up.

My daughter was the one who got up.

Getting up was her solitary victory.

I didn’t share it…it had nothing to do with me.  I was watching from the sidelines. I wasn’t in the race. I can’t claim any credit for what happened.

I don’t remember Zoe winning any races.

I don’t think that I could be any prouder of her for being the one who got up.

We watch our children grow…and wonder “What’s going to happen when this one leaves the nest? What’s going to become of her? What’s going to become of him?”.

When our children “bounce back”…or get up when they’ve fallen…it helps us know that, no matter what happens, things have a shot at turning out alright.

Thanks for getting back up, Zoe.  Thank you for that memory.