Category / Family

by Michael

Marriage & Things I Couldn’t See

Yesterday I celebrated a milestone with Dawn, our tenth wedding anniversary.  We ended the evening by mumbling and sighing how good God has been to have kept us.  Kept us sane.  Kept us together.  Kept us loving.

Marriage, to me, is hard.  I mean that two ways.  To me, marriage is hard.  And marriage to me is hard.  Though my wife has no other referent, she’ll gladly confess that I am right when I say being married to me is challenging.  I have been described as difficult, mostly by people who are themselves difficult.  They are difficult and they are, sometimes, right. And still, I thought throughout the day of my traits and issues and about how when we got married, there were many things about married life I couldn’t see.

The effort it took to renovate a fixer upper the first year.  Having to walk a dog early in the morning even in the cold.  Feeling unknown in a relationship when I was trying still to know myself.  The error in selling a house six months too soon.  The joy in learning about my wife’s interest in something.

Being thrown up on after tacos because my wife hated my cooking.  Just kidding.  She was really really sick, and I know how to cook.

I didn’t see how much I liked road trips and how little Dawn did.  I didn’t see the encouraging conversations of friends saying that they believed I was built to be good at marriage, even when I thought nothing could be less truer.  I couldn’t know that models would stand up and walk before me and help me be something I never saw everyday as a child.

I couldn’t see death coming to people we loved.  Breakups that shook us and made us pray when we really don’t pray much as a couple.  The strange tension that came with being a pastor and a husband.  The life of working all the time while going to seminary, the feeling that I could do more still, and, years later, the questioning of that same crazy mindset.  I didn’t imagine the pleasure of traveling to a few beautiful places and not wanting to go with any other person than my wife.  I couldn’t know how long it would take us to conceive.  I couldn’t see the arguments in the closet, the disagreements over big and little things, the silence between us after I answered one too many of her questions with–what I still believe is a scholarly answer–“I don’t know.”

Nobody sees everything when they stand underneath a preacher’s pronouncement or a judge’s declaration.  I like to remind couples looking to marry–and couples not looking to do so–that it takes work to see, to notice.  And it takes courage.  Even with work and courage, though, you still don’t see it all.  Even when you’re trying hard, you miss things.  You prepare and after preparing, you still need the experience to come and show you what a thing is all about.  You need the experience to acquaint you with what you don’t know, with your broken places, with your potential, and with grace.  Marriage has been like that for me.

A friend of mine sent a quote to me once, a quote I asked her to locate and resend because I heard it in my head, but couldn’t say it the way I remembered.  Unfortunately she misplaced it, couldn’t herself remember who said it.  I attributed it to Mark Twain because that’s who I thought she said it was from originally.  But, alas, it’s lost for now.  Maybe it wasn’t Mark Twain.  Maybe it was Ms. Anonymous.  Nonetheless, the sentence had something to do with seeing in a relationship.  I wish I could capture it in the concise way I read it.  I do.  It makes me less of a writer that I can’t remember.  Anyway.  It was something on the order of…people who see too much too soon don’t stay–or–sometimes seeing everything is really seeing too much.

I think that God is gracious when we don’t see all the things ahead of us.  Seeing, as bold a behavior it is, opens us to things that require maturity.  I’m glad I couldn’t see all of what would come in that last ten years.  And somehow I am looking forward to the next ten.  I mean that literally.

My wife wrote to a few people in her end of the year letter last December that she said to me–and I’ll close with this as an utterance of agreement, slightly revised to fit the post about our ten years–if we could make it through last year, we could make it through any year.  I agree.  I believe.  And may it be so.

by Michael

Being Late

The other day I dropped my son off to Maggie’s.  She had consented to watch him for a few hours before one of the Grands picked him up.  When I got to the Swansons’ place, I was rushing.  We were late.  The boy delayed matters that morning.

He wasn’t as interested in eating breakfast as I expected him to be.  His little lips closed when I offered his cereal.  He, of course, didn’t obey when I told him to eat.  At least not right away.  He sat, taking me in, figuring me out.  I saw his little mind working, wondering why I was glancing at the clock, why I was rushing his meal.  I saw his brain turning, thinking how futile my anxiety was.  The boy already knew that we, and I, were late.  And he had no problem with lateness.  He had no place to be except where he was.  It became a little lesson for me.

So, there was me saying “Come here” to him.  “Come put on your coat.”  There was him looking at me, standing still in the doorway.  There was the bottle to grab so he could drink when he arrived at the Swansons.  There was the pacifer to put in the bag.  Did I remember that?  Even though he was officially off the thing, Dawn reintroduced it last week since he was sick.  I disagreed.  He didn’t need the mouth stop in my view, but sometimes I go along with other people’s programs.  There was the coat to put on.  I needed to bring the stroller.  Grannie would walk him home.  I forgot the spare set of keys.

When I got to Maggie’s, it was too early to greet her.  I think I grunted.  A thin layer of sweat always pops across my forehead when I’m late.  I hate being late.  Almost as much as I hate being yelled at.  I have a thing about time.  The boy doesn’t get that.  He was waiting in the strapped seat for me.  I pulled the stuff out of the trunk.  I got him.  Maggie was great, always is.  When I ran through answers to her questions, I sounded quick.  She knew I was late because I told her I was going to be there 2o something minutes before that moment.  Maggie probably laughed inside, amused that I still don’t quite get how being a parent leaves you perpetually unable to schedule yourself well.  It’s a loss.

I turned to leave.  I heard Bryce wailing.  Maggie picked him up.  He’s aware of what it means when he’s at the Swansons’ or at one of the Grands’ homes.  He knew I was leaving.  He yelled.  I turned, hearing and not hearing, thinking about my appointment and how late I was going to be.  When I got to the car, I wondered if it would matter to me later on in his development that he no longer cried when I left.  I wondered if it will bother me as much then as it did that morning because I was late, that I was off schedule, that I had something to be rearranged.  It probably won’t.  I’ll probably cry one day that the boy doesn’t care that I’m here or anywhere, and I’ll probably miss those tears I tasted when I kissed him goodbye in Maggie’s arms.

by Michael

Writing, Parenting, Pastoring

A brother asked me the other week how I balance the parts of my life.  He is a student finishing a second Masters degree in the realm of pastoral and theological studies.  He knows how difficult leading in a church can be.  Most divinity students or seminary students hear and learn pretty quickly that the work of pastors can be, let’s say, ongoing.  We don’t finish projects in the same way that non-pastors do.  Even with increasing specialization in ministry, it’s difficult.  In my church, we aren’t necessarily generalists, meaning we don’t do “everything.”  We do specific things.

My friend David Swanson is different.  He is on our staff, but as a church planter, he’s much closer to doing everything than, say, Peter Hong, our lead pastor.  Because of New Community Logan Square’s age, most of the staff consists of ministry ministry specialists.  One person oversees Children’s Ministry as an example.  That’s her area.  Another leads worship and ministries related to Sunday worship service because that’s her area.

I’m not a senior pastor.  Part of what that means for me in my full-time work life is that I don’t consistently prepare sermons or studies.  I teach at New Community periodically, regularly, but not hardly as much as my supervisor or some of my friends.  That said, I don’t get bored with the details of my role.  I’m an executive pastor, though I prefer the title associate pastor, and for me that involves leadership in the areas of staff supervision, ministerial duties, and vision implementation, to choose the three predominant and no less clear-for-you areas (you who aren’t in my church) I spend time working on.

So, me and my seminary student friend discussed balance.  We got to me and writing and parenting and pastoring.  I told him that I wasn’t balancing well.  At least not lately.  I told him that when I’m not exercising consistently, I’m also not writing consistently.  I told him that I’m just reentering the world of regular exercise after a year since the boy’s coming.

I’ve read the advice that writers should write daily, that where ever we have to squeeze it in, we need to.  My life doesn’t allow it.  And, of course, that nags me.  But I write as much as I can, as often as I can.  It’s a little compromise.  I can’t quite give up being a pastor, particularly since that’s what I spend the largest amounts of my time doing, thinking about, preparing for, etc.  With parenting, you don’t just pause as a father after the child comes.  This kid doesn’t go away.  He’s always around.  He’s adorable, but he keeps me occupied.  Even when he goes to bed, he’s goes after having left me with rooms full of things to do.

Writing, well, writing is different.  I can short change writing and claim exhaustion.  Of course, writing will complain.  My characters show up, crowd, and scream in my dreams, doing their best to rouse me to my desk.  A trusted person told me, after I explained some really deep-for-me things, that I was being called to write more.  To spend more time with my writng.  I’m almost back to a stride, not my old one when I wrote 1,000 words per day until the story was done or at least done with me for the moment.  I’m much slower.  But I’m thinking about that story, those people, and their lives.  I’m writing in my head nowadays, even if I haven’t gotten all those letters into this bright box.

by Michael

Grace and Parenting Mistakes

One of the things we did to celebrate my son’s birthday was visit my father in Little Rock.  On the way back, I was tired.  I hadn’t eaten.  I had gotten up early, at the time I designated, so we could get on the road and return home in enough time to keep the bedtime ritual solid.  It’s funny how much happens around a baby’s bedtime routine. 

We got up early.  I slept enough hours to feel like I could actually drive while awake.  But I hadn’t gotten that much sleep, certainly not enough to deal with people, including a small one, expecting me to be social.  My wife understood this about me at the time.  She’s had enough experiences with me to know that I’m half sane before morning.  She knows that morning to me is post 10a.m., and that any time before morning is still night.  My son, well, he’s still learning about these things.

Somewhere, long after my real morning, and probably closer to the afternoon, I had been driving long enough to wish the trip was over.  The boy had his naps.   We stopped for lunch.  Things were fine.  But the kid started making noise.  My eyes had started doing the things they do when I’m tired.  I don’t exactly not see things in those moments, but I can tell that it takes more concentration and energy to focus.  I get quieter.  I pay more attention to how I’m holding the wheel. 

Bryce whined and cried.  I told him to stop.  Of course, he didn’t listen.  Well, he didn’t obey.  I told him that I was not in the mood to hear his noise.  He kept up the noise-making anyway.  I raised my voice to match him.  I turned up the music to drown him out.  When he was smaller, music would settle him.  He’d stop or moan or even bounce at the head.  Coming back from Little Rock he just screamed.  At some point he stopped fussing.  But it was after I’d gotten short with him.  It was after I made the mistake of losing patience, the thing I seem to lose so easily.  He stopped after I marked my little parenting path with another small failure. 

I thought about it that night.  I wondered if he were piling up my mistakes and my wrongs in his little head. the way I had been  I wondered, worse, if he wasn’t.  I wondered how it was that he could so quickly forget my shortcomings and run to me with stretched up arms after his bath or his meal, asking me to hold him.  I wondered if Bryce was secretly plotting in his crib to get even when he’s the one changing my diapers. 

It would probably make me feel better if the boy was able to keep count of my errors and wrongs.  It’d make me feel accomplished if I knew there was a correlation between good parenting moments and a good outcome with my son or bad moments and bad outcomes.  It would leave me with something to count and organize and expect.  From what I’m told by seasoned parents, though, that’s not the way it is. 

God, having something to do with children-making and parent-developing, probably smiles at little thoughts like mine.  Thoughts which hope that we could do the right things and get the right results.  If I am patient enough, then I’ll be a better parent.  If I am good enough at this parenting job, then the kid’ll come up bright and confident and handsome.  That’s the essential parenting mistake in my increasingly muddy and yet clear view.  It pushes grace out when we need it most.  That car ride was just another current example of how I’m in need of a grace-giver, and not just the boy.  This short spark of a fuse in my heart is an abiding reminder that the more my boy grows up, the more help I’ll need to raise him.  I couldn’t get through that ride, yes, without the forebearance of my wife and a little help from some random country song by Rascal Flatts that mysteriously came on three separate stations in Missouri.  But I couldn’t make it without God either.

by Michael

Boys, Men, or Something In Between

My son’s birthday is approaching, and one of my gifts will be to continually evaluate what kind of man I’m presenting to him.  I fear being a poor example because I want him to grow up loving people, honoring his mother, respecting his elders and everyone after that.  I want him to be a bold man, to be what he is.  I want him to have a bright boyhood full of fun and laughter, a phase that leads to a young adulthood that exposes him to greatness, that calls him to greatness.  I want him to be so much better than I am, than my mentors have been, than the exemplars before him–even though we’re aren’t “all that bad.”

I don’t think being a man is easy and I’m already finding that bringing one up has its challenges.  Telling him how to respond when people speak to him.  Walking with him by the hand so we can see new things approaching really slowly since once of us moves slower than the other.  Encouraging him to explore but not so much that he jumps off a balcony.  Watching him pull the oven door down upon his head.  And then watching him go toward it again later, just brushing against it that second time as he remembers the knot on his head from just a few weeks ago.  Yeah, I did it.  It’s called Michael’s method of child-proofing. 

I cannot imagine parenting without all my smart and generous family and friends around me and Dawn.  I cannot imagine.  With that said, I read something that has me turning over my role as a father and my role as a guy, as a man.  The question, “What makes a man?” stands out from a piece I read over at the WSJ.

The article talks about pre-adulthood, that phase that’s certainly post-high school and often post-college when young adults are earning and spending money and making their own decisions.  They are deciding what they want to do and what they don’t, including whether or not to clean the kitchen or take out the garbage.  Young adults, males and females, are deciding how to pay bills, how to develop themselves, how to become.  And, though the article is about men, women go through this as well.  I have a niece who’s growing up, and at times it is painful to watch.  But this post is about boys and men and something in between.

I’m wondering how you view manhood and what it takes to become a man.  I’m wondering if you have a real clear approach to raising the boys in your life so that they become good men.  I’m wondering why some guys are less motivated to get up and do things like take care of the people they love. 

I grew up with good models, including my father who didn’t live with us.  He taught me.  My mother taught me.  Other “fathers” taught me.  It’s foreign to me not to wash and cook and take care of myself, almost to the point where I find myself saying “I don’t need you” because I’m so good at that self-care thing, if that makes sense.  I’m not the guy who would just watch a woman do things for me.  I never have been.  My mother taught me to iron my shirts and she stopped because I started.  I have other issues, ones we don’t need to discuss in this post.  But this article reminds me that I can’t take for granted what becoming a man is and that’s done these days.  Seeing my boy grow up tells me the same. 

Questions for you: How do you think we can continue to encourage boys to become men?  And let’s not get nasty.  Let’s be constructive.  Any thoughts?  Is the project of bringing up a boy different from the one years ago?

by Michael

An Indispensable Checklist, 2 of 2

The last post started my small list of things to do when you’re readying yourself for a new kid.  Or a new all-encompassing something.  Here’s the balance of my suggestions for the checklist:

  1. Create a plan for how you’ll take care of yourself.  If you got a person in your life or even if you went to a new job, you’d benefit from having in place the way you plan to live and stay alive during those first critical months.  I told my wife that it would’ve helped greatly if I could’ve come around month 4.  She hardly laughed.  I thought it was funny.  Those first months were brutal.  I still find myself telling people that I would have had an easier time emotionally if I could have surfaced a few months in, mostly because self-care was less possible.  I couldn’t sleep.  I walked too much.  I jumped up from quasi sleep when the boy moved, when the wife sneezed.  I learned how to care for the boy but not for me.
  2. Implement above-mentioned plan as soon as possible but before your kid arrives.  Not much to say here.  You need to practice the pattern of your life early on.  The kid will so disrupt that pattern that if it’s not grained in, if it’s not second-nature, the plan will disintegrate.  Even then the plan was fall and crash and shatter.  The other day I went to exercise and I saw a friend, a personal trainer.  I waved and talked for a minute to Mimi, interfering with her client’s workout.  I knew her client didn’t care.  Personal training is torture so the pause was probably desired.  I told Mimi that I could count the times I had worked my fitness routine in the last year on one hand.  I didn’t have a way to “keep pushing play,” to continue exercising during those last eleven months. 
  3. Decide what your measures of growth will be.  When I first started leading the staff at Sweet Holy Spirit years ago, before I knew about NC3 and what I’d be doing here, one of my coworkers challenged me on a particular decision.  I remember telling myself that that was the person, the relationship I wanted to renovate and change so that when I left, she’d be one of my best supporters.  It happened.  And that change was a marker for me.  It gave me a picture of growth.  When you start a new job, how will you know when you’re effective, when you’re wrong, when you’re at your best or at your worst?  What about the relationship you’re nurturing?  How will you know these things with a kid if you’re a new parent?  Decide what your pencil marks on the wall will be.
  4. Tell your mother to help.  She will.  She’ll help you more than you want.  She’ll feed your kid black eye peas when he’s four months old and tell you she didn’t.  She’ll let the boy stay up later than he’s supposed to and she’ll devise a plan that’s different from the one you made.  Uh, for the record, my mama didn’t do this.  Not exactly.  My point is that mothers and family and loved ones are the best helpers when we’re faced with something new.  I am fond of repeating something a professor once said.  It takes the brain up to three years to adjust to a new role, to a major transition.  Let other people help you and give yourself time and grace to catch up to the role, to the relationship, and to its demands.

Would you add anything?

by Michael

An Indispensible Checklist, 1 of 2

I remember people telling me when I was engaged to get married that you were never “ready” to get married.  They said the same thing about parenthood.  They, whoever they are, are probably right.  You may not ever be ready, but you can be prepared.  A year ago me and Dawn were in the slow process of readying ourselves for the baby who is Bryce. 

So, reflecting on some of the grand experiences of having a newly born boy in my house, I offer the following checklist for you who are preparing for something or someone that promises to change your life.  Maybe not a baby.  Myabe a new job or life after a breakup.  I’m writing, thinking about prepping for a baby but I suppose you can read this a view toward preparing for anything:

1) Consider why you want one of these people in your home.  Really.  Why do you want that job?  Or that baby?  Of course, some people wouldn’t necessarily say they want a baby.  They may just get one.  It’s helpful to know your reasons, whatever they are.  Sometimes the reasons sustain you at two in the morning when you haven’t slept because of you-know-who or you know what in the case of a new job or a new life as a student.  Or when you’ve changed seven diapers with increasing amounts of baby waste, all in varying shades of green, brown, purple, and gray.

2) Start a list of reminders of life before the baby.  I believe that life should be lived in the moment.  Life is now.  But life now is informed and shaped by what we’ve done and what we’re looking to do.  New parents need to remember what life was so that we are able to do what the wise mentor of mine, Johnathan Alvarado, says, integrate a child into the life you have and not build your life around a child.

3) Develop ideas on what you’d do if a sitter magically appeared.  One way of thinking about this is to consider how you’d take a break, how you’d relax.  Friends might call.  Relatives may become spontaneously generous.  Of course, you won’t leave your kid with everybody.  You won’t even leave the child with every relative.  But if those people on the parentally approved Post-It came along, what would you do if you had an hour or three?  Know this because God might send someone or someones to provide you respite.  I have my list.  It’s developing into a seasonally adaptive list, too.  So, if you’re on my Post-It (and you know who you are), I’m ready already for your call!

4) Make a list of all your friends.  Then, send them an email, or better, call them.  Have a nice conversation for as long as you can.  And end the conversation with something along the language of, “I enjoyed this, loved this.  If we don’t do it again in a few years, don’t take it personally.”  The truth is you will have to make an effort to keep those special people around.  You won’t have the energy to be friends.  You’ll hardly have energy to go to work.  Or to brush your teeth.  You’ll give yourself over to that child.  I imagine starting a job is like this.  You give all you are to it.

by Michael

My Boy’s First Failing Grade

The boy isn’t in school.  I’m told that early enrollment doesn’t mean that a ten-month old can buy a laptop and graph paper.  But he has already gotten his first marks.  They weren’t good, if you’re paying attention to the title of the post.

I should say that I think we struck it rich in finding our pediatrician.  In fact, it’s a practice full of good doctors.  We not only get the best pediatrician for the kid, but when we can’t get on her schedule, all of her colleagues are great substitutes. 

Everytime we go, they give us cheat sheets, printed in a color different from the previous visit.  I think we’re starting a file somewhere, tracking these appointments.  They tell their own stories, these cheat sheets, capturing everything from the boy’s weight, height, and head size to all kinds of helpful information, which mysteriously answers all the questions we’ve brought up with the doctor while at that visit.  I get the sense that these good people have had enough Q&As with parents that it’s easier to prepare the standard answers in advance.  To me, it’s great planning, and I’m not really sure why these sheets impress me so much.  Let me get to my real point though.

During the last checkup, the nine-month, we were given a test.  It was a booklet.  I didn’t really listen when Dawn and Doctor talked about the exam.  I needed the basics.  There was a test.  I know what that means.  I’ve taken a few.  The boy has homework.  Sit him at the table with a pencil and follow the instructions.  Don’t help him.  It’s a test. 

But my wife went over the test with Bryce.  The tasks took my back to my first class in psychology and that other one about learning and memory.  I thought about my favorite teacher at Wheaton, Scottie May who knows everything about how children learn.  I saw Bryce’s results on the counter and pinched myself when I saw the answers Dawn (or Bryce through Dawn) had chosen.  I wondered to myself when I saw a few circles how this would shake out.  Dawn mailed it in.

Now, we don’t get calls from the boy’s doctor.  Well, the office calls to remind us about appointments but that’s it.  So, when I came home and heard about the conversation my wife had with Dr. Hong, I was intrigued.  I went straight to the boy and asked him why he didn’t get a better grade.  Why is your doctor calling my house?  I asked it in my I’m-the-concerned-father-of-a-student voice.  Bryce was smiling, no doubt performing his own mental test of me at the moment. 

We talked about him looking for hidden phones, juggling my wallet, his mom’s cell and noisy bus with shapes cut out of the window.  I spoke about him banging something on a table or chair or a floor, about going under the bed for a remote control. 

Finding a hidden toy was one he was graded poorly on.  “He does that,” I told Dawn.  To which she explained that she hadn’t seen it.  In my mind I started thinking that I was  a better test-taker, that I should’ve completed the paperwork, that my son now had a record, of sorts. 

I was worried.  I texted his doctor and said I guess the kid wasn’t enrolling in Harvard anytime soon.  Then I hid the favorite toy.  And me and my wife saw him go after it.  Not to be quickly satisfied, we did it again.  He picked up the pillow and took the toy.  Then, I texted the redemptive message, my way of suggesting–like our pediatrician did when she returned this texted reply–“there’s always northwestern.”

by Michael

Watching Small Steps

We met yesterday as small group leaders to discuss the scope of the spring semester at GETS.  We talked about CEQs and heard a few anecdotes from one another about how our classes were going.  We talked about how last semester felt, what we’re looking forward to as classes begin, and what we’re doing differently for the second half of the academic year.  Everyone in the room has served in this capacity for 2-3 years, and we couldn’t dismiss our comparisons with previous classes. 

I thought about our conversation.  I thought about all the changes to syllabi, the books and articles we added and removed for one year and not another.  I thought to my first formation group and how we all we figuring things out three years ago.  I’ve grown since I first started working in the vocational formation and church leadership program.  As a pastor.  As a teacher.  As a person. 

I’m noticing that growth happens mostly when I’m not looking.  Or when I’m always looking and I, therefore, can’t tell the difference between yesterday and the one I’m in.  Monitoring growth is hard when you see the thing growing everyday.  The thing or the person.  You inevitably miss markers which indicate real growth. 

My kid is crawling faithfully.  But he’s taking little steps as well.  He’s walking two or three steps to beat the dishwasher when it’s on.  He steps to his mother but never after I run for the video camera.  I pull his arms up and we step together before I pull those same arms over my head to place him behind my neck so he can release long streams of baby spit in my clean spots.  I need to watch small steps because I can miss so much waiting for the major change to announce itself.  It just doesn’t announce itself.  It slips or steps and sputters, and then you’ve grown.

by Michael

Year To Date Letters

Maggie and David Swanson have taught me many things in the ten years we’ve known each other.  On that list is now year-end letter writing. 

Even though we’ve received these year-end missives over the course of our marriage from missionaries and random organizations, the Swansons were our first letter writers, and Dawn wanted to add the gesture this year.  She brought it up after we got a slew of beautiful greeting cards, several with snapshots of children, and, well, letters.  I think she’s more interested in sending people a picture of our boy than anything.

If you’re unfamiliar with the communication, it’s a letter, usually typed, that captures a person or family’s year.  It’s like a one-page summary of life lived. 

We are writing ours.  That’s important.  Because when we do things, it’s not like one of us doing things.  Dawn is taking a part.  I’m taking a part.  I’ll inevitably edit both parts.  And then Dawn will edit my edit.  I love to cut words when she loves to add them.  I choose a word to capture a sentence, usually her sentence, and she’ll tell me I should have included this or that recollection.  It’s going to be fun. 

She’s the type of writer who writes for a long time.  I’m the type who says I’ll work on a thing from this time to that time.  She will probably want to work on this into February, and I’ll have to remind her that we wanted it to go out at the end of December.  She’ll keep writing the same thing and may get a bit upset when I’ve offered my last feedback–because, well, my time is up for it.  We’ll compromise.  Because I’ll print the letter and start stuffing envelopes.

I’ve been thinking about my two paragraphs for a week.  I’ll write them tomorrow, I think.  It feels like querying for a novel, boiling down an entire story to a pitch paragraph or two.  It already feels like next year we’ll decide that quarterly updates are best, but who has time for that?

Do you write these letters?  Why do you do it?

by Michael

Crawling Before You Climb

My son started crawling a few months ago.  It’s been a treat to hear him slapping the floor, to watch him pull away with one leg constantly raised.  I told Dawn that he’d walk early back when I’d change his diaper in those first weeks and his legs would stretch straight.  The little things would feel like sticks.  Try changing a nasty diaper with two stubborn sticks for legs. 

I’d gently tickle the backs of his knees, asking him to bend.  Sometimes he cooperated quickly.  Sometimes he laughed at me and made cleaning time much longer.  Did the boy think I enjoyed the scents of his bottom?  Dawn talked about how a baby smells.  “I want him to smell like a baby,” she said at random times.  As if babies come smelling like powder or lavender or Eucerin.  No, not my kid.  He smells the way I last remember him.  And I’ve changed a lot of diapers.  But I digress.

I knew he’d move quickly with those limbs.  But I didn’t think he’d start to climb stairs before he actually knew how to walk.  We don’t have stairs at home.  We live on a floor and take the elevator.  So, we were visiting a relative, Grammie Joseph, when he did it. 

His mother jumped up the stairs, vanishing before him.  You don’t think about things like stair-climbing unless you’re at a gym watching the unnatural exericse called stair masters or unless you’re a nine-month old, I guess.  This kid went after his mother.  He climbed the stairs, one at a time.  What I do?  I watched and climbed, from a very close step behind him, offering mumbles of surprise and praise and curiosity and encouragement. 

He’d stop on a random step.  He tried to descend too, but I wasn’t ready for that.  I don’t think he was either.  So, he’s not walking.  He’s standing, sometimes on his own.  He’s clenching pulling himself up on pant legs or just legs.  And he’s climbing stairs.  We’ll try walking later.

by Michael

The Different People We Are When We Write

The subject came up in class last week.  One of my students mentioned an article on social media and she told the class that the piece got her thinking about how and why and whether she should use social media.  The conversation broadened a bit to one about integrity, keeping ourselves whole, while we communicate and present ourselves as ourselves in various contexts, through different platforms.  In other words, who I am in person, when you walk up to me on 55th Street is the same or is different from the person writing this post or updating facebook.

Then I read this article by one of the writing professionals I follow, Jane Friedman where she talks about what we used to do when we wrote letters.  Her words got me thinking about all the stamps I bought in high school and college when I wrote love poems and long letters to the young ladies I liked. 

In both experiences–in class and when reading Jane’s post–I’m reminded that how we communicate has changed.  This is not news.  We know this.  But it’s worth keeping in mind.  My son will likely never know what it means to write a letter long hand.  Except when I make him do it, right before he recasts me in that category of “old.”  He’ll only know through the storytelling sessions, whatever they’ll be called, when we explain what those envelopes are from Dr. Joseph who has consistently (and solely) wrote mailed envelopes to him since before he was born.

We don’t write the way we once did, most of us.  Even when most people do write, when we’re online, it takes effort to be who we are.  It’s easy to present yourself to facebook–to your friends there–in a way that’s distinct from who you are during most of your life.  Different from who you are during the rest of your life.

I think life’s about being who you are, finding out who you are and being who you are.  Not someone else.  I like to tell people that no matter where I am I will always be a Christian.  I will always be Dawn’s husband.  I will always be Bryce’s father.  Even when I make Jesus and my wife and my boy upset, that’s who I am.

I know there’s a good chunk of news these days about people developing alternative selves, affairs, and new identities with the tools of social media.  I realize that some people are disposed to having a group of people in “this” area who never reach or touch a separate group in “that” area.  Work friends are work friends.  Relatives never meet college friends.  And on and on.

But wouldn’t life be simpler if we weren’t different people when we wrote, whether in an old long-hand letter, on a blog, or in an update?

Any thoughts?