Category / Interior Life

This category includes all the interior stuff that will decorate our lives, things we’ll show outside because they’re inside.

by Michael

My Adorable Son, An Idol

As a clergy person I lead people in worship.  That means that I spend time with people, and while I’m with them, I point them to God.  I facilitate people’s encounters with the Divine.  I don’t create the encounters.  I don’t create the people.  I sometimes simply nudge people in a direction, or turn them around, or push them to keep listening or seeing or waiting until they notice Who was there but was, somehow, unseen.  You might say that I do this for a living.  In other words, when I’m with a person, a pair, or a group I’m asking the unrelenting question, how can I help this person encounter God so they can live?

What often comes with this occupation is an abiding question: what enables me to encounter God?  The other day I was thinking about why I wasn’t sleeping.  I was turning over in bed, trying to convince myself that I shouldn’t envy my wife or my son.  I was listening to them slumber, Dawn right next to me, Bryce in the other room.  Both of them were whispering little dreams to themselves, hardly moving, content.  I was, as I said, turning and trying to flip away from the little anger in me that comes with occasional insomnia.

It’s not insomnia, I tell people.  I can actually sleep.  It’s just that I can’t sleep like abnormal people, on command.  I sleep in a different time zone.  I sleep later, but I do sleep.  I can’t sleep like my wife or my brother, both of whom will enter into sleep 13 seconds after pulling a sheet over themselves.  I look at them and I wonder why they aren’t more normal.  Why don’t they fall asleep?  Why must they jump into it?

When I am not asleep, my head dances.  It doesn’t throb or ache, but it dances to the music of a thousand thoughts.  I think about a congregant and it gives me reason, again, to pray.  I think about class and whether I should just get up and read in preparation.  I think about the novel I’m currently reading, Donna Freitas’s The Survival Kit, which I greatly enjoy, about the book of Maya Angelou’s poems I’m slowing reading and some snatch of words it left me.  I think about one of my heroes in ministry, how he’s aging.  I think about what I’ll cook tomorrow with that roasted chicken and whether I’ll cook the potatoes with onions and asparagus or just with the onions.

On the pre-dawn morning in question, I got to remembering when my son was crying a few days before.  He has a tactic—I’m convinced that’s what it is—where he’ll whine, which I despise because it is a pernicious method in undoing me, and while whining he calls for his mother.  He’ll do this in a tone that makes me contemplate how quickly I can climb down from our balcony and onto a neighbor’s despite our sixth floor setting.  His voice, which isn’t a voice as much as a dismal sound in the distance just like the fire truck that kept sounding all night long that night prior and that I counted screaming four times from 6:55 to 7:23AM, his voice drones as he calls.

That day, last week, he called her as was normal and then he started into my title.  Daddy.  Daddy.  And like a dripping drain it came until I turned looking for a clue because I had already started failing at my dogged resistance of the boy.  I am really good at keeping the rules of our parenting pact.  We don’t go into him after he’s in bed.  But that week was a strange week for a lot of reasons.  And we caved.  Dawn mostly did, but I did too.  I had come home late two evenings, rather than one, and he hadn’t seen me.  He missed me.  Dawn said this to me.  I said this to me.  Bryce’s whine said this to me.

After it all was done, days later, there I was listening to those damn birds that sang all night long because they, too, were confused about the weather outside and about whether birds should be awake and singing from 2:30 to 5:30AM.  I didn’t know they were keeping me company.  It took the congested sound of the delivery truck, gurgling below at 7:35AM, for me to remember that earlier, melodious birdsong.  I lay there thinking about the way my heart jumped when the boy called for me.  I didn’t move as quickly as I wanted to, but I did want to.

It got me thinking that my son was in a dangerous position, a position anyone loved by another can be placed in.  Bryce was a potential idol.  He was a potential reason for getting up and doing.  He could become, I thought while fighting for sleep, the reason why I did what I did.  That little toddler, full of nonsensical noise and play and fun, could turn me away from the One for whom I’m spending my life.  I know it’s a slip of movement.  It’s a crazed thought, one that I’d probably only come to when I hadn’t been taken my some real night dream instead.  But it stayed with me, that thought.  It was like all those birds and that heaving meat truck and those red blaring engines from the night and the morning.  It didn’t leave me.

by Michael

Father Wounds

The following post, written by Sylvia Klauser,  is a profound and elegant reminder about the impact of fathers, and I pulled it from the Mennonite Weekly Review.

I read about Whitney Houston’s death while at a conference in Washington, D.C. A friend and I had been at dinner and heard that famous I wanna dance with somebody. Today I have the time to sit and watch the tribute morning shows, listening to song after favorite song. I will always love you stands out for its message of a love that transcends racial boundaries and fears of the others. Even more tragic is that Whitney Houston died on the eve of the Grammy awards — a singer’s celebration of their greatest achievement.

Born with an incredible talent, she came to fame by way of the church. An instant, well-meaning audience provided her with a training ground for that incredible voice. It certainly helps to have the Godmother of soul as your real Godmother. However, talent is a free gift that can easily be squandered.

It is so sad to hear about Whitney’s struggle with drugs and alcohol. Is it a result of the fame, or a cause of it? While I listen to song after song, it seems that they all have a common theme. Who will love me? How will I know that you are honest? I will always love you. I’m every woman. Can I trust you, and so on. The themes are the same: Whitney felt empty without love. She, like every woman (and man) in this world, feels incomplete without the other. But what kind of love are we looking for? And what happens to us when that hole is not filled?

In his book From Wild Man to Wise Man, Richard Rohr writes about the “father hunger” that becomes a “father wound” for those of us who have never been touched and trusted by our fathers. It seems that the father wound oozes from each of Whitney’s songs. Rohr writes, “we lack self-confidence, the ability to do, to carry through, to trust ourselves, because we were never trusted and touched by him.” Whitney’s life is marked by “earned worth,” a constant striving to get more in order to fill this hole where Dad’s trust and touch is missing.

What fills the hole? Well, the story is out all over the tabloids now. It’s not only Whitney or other famous folk who died of this father wound lately. Drugs, alcohol, mind and sense numbing substances only increase feelings of worthlessness and loneliness when the high wears off. I am saddened by Whitney’s line where she names herself the devil in a 2002 Dianne Sawyer interview; but she is dead-on with her assessment. It is our own responsibility to figure out the father wound and then work on fixing it — whether we can meet with our fathers and attempt reconciliation, or whether we have to learn to live with the hole for the rest of our lives.

To heal the father wound is our most intimate, personal and spiritual work, maybe the only work of our lifetimes. No one can do it for us, not fame or drugs or even world-class therapists. We must reconcile with the fact that even our fathers have father wounds. They tried the best they knew how, but the lack of trust and touch is an evil root that stealthily hurts us until we root it out. May peace be with Whitney.

I was born in the same year as Whitney, and I too, sang in church. I was touched deeply by her songs of searching, wanting and needing. I also have to do my own father work so that the rest of my life is not a running after all the things that fall short of that primal need to be loved and trusted and touched.

Sylvia Klauser works in the education and spiritual care department of The Methodist Hospital System in Houston.

by Michael

Richard Westley on Why He Loves Having a Daughter

I was introduced to this pastor through a friend, and he has a splendid post about why he loves having a daughter.

I have just a few months before my youngest child and daughter turns two.  Cora Mae Nicole Johnson is a bright soul in my life.  Her smile is gorgeous and she’s becoming quite an entertainer.  I wish you could see her dance and hear her sing and watch her act as if all eyes are not on her.  Because I just had the inspiration to write about her, I thought I’d share what I am learning from “missy”.  My dreams for her are rooted in my theology that God equally calls and equips women for vocational ministry and service in the church.  Although I don’t necessarily see call of God for Cora to serve in a vocational ministry space, I certainly don’t want our culture nor the church to limit her opportunities to reach any potential the Spirit imparts to her.  So without further adue…my list for why I am thankful to have a daughter.

  1. Cora Mae teaches me to pay attention to gender differences.  I rough house with my boys and I muyst be mindful that Cora is not like that.  I can’t give a skowl to her (in jest) and expect her to playfully skowl back at me.  Her feelings can not be played with…and must be nurtured and protected.  One look could just about ruin a day for her and me.
  2. A daughter truly gives me a love that is different from my boys.  Just listening to her say, “daddy” is enough to make my day. I don’t feel called into competition nor do I feel as if need to coach with Cora.  Strangely, I am more relaxed around her.  Think about #1 on this list and you might assume I’d be on pins and needles around her.  On the contrary, I feel more at ease with Cora…playful.  With my boys I feel a sense of responsibility to prepare them for a harsh world.

Click here to finish reading Richard’s post.

by Michael

Question For The Week

How will my son describe me?

I think this question looms in my head most days.  It annoys me, it looms so much.  It stands and says hello when I’m correcting the boy and when my fathering voice is rising.  It comes up when I’m not thinking about anything in particular.  I could be buying diapers or making breakfast.  The washing machine could be swishing or the boy could be playing the couch as if it’s a piano.  Like a light shining on some spot of dirt when guests arrive, this question presents itself to me at the oddest and most noticeable moments.

I hush it.  I turn my eyes from it.  I quiet it by ignoring it even though it never goes away.  I look at something else, something in front of me like a dirty shirt or a shopping list or a pot with something called dinner inside.  I watch for the present moment and try to discard the futuristic orientation that despite my best effort doesn’t release me.  There are, in my life, pernicious questions, and this is one of the strongest.  It matters a lot this question, more than it should probably.  How will Bryce think of me?  How will he talk about me to his friends or to those folks who sit in his classes while everyone is talking about their fathers for one reason or another?  How will he put together the image of his father?

It matters how he’ll answer those same questions for the others.  He has many family members and many more people who love him.  So his future answers for those folks are significant.  But I don’t think about those people and his possible views of them.  No, I think of him and me, and I wonder.

I want him to love me and respect me and believe in me.  I want him to obey me and have fun with me and eat my food.  I want him to clean up and contribute to the family.  I want him to stretch himself and to do small and big great things.  I know I have a lot of desires for this kid.  And it’s inside all my spoken and unspoken desires that this question sits.

Will he see and experience me in a particular way, in a way that I don’t intend?  Am I doing things that undo the person I’m trying to become in front of him?

Being a father feels like a perpetual mirror.  Sometimes that’s lovely.  Sometimes it feels exhausting.  It’s lovely when that boy is smiling and laughing and when I know that I’m one of his favorite people in the world.  I don’t live to be the boy’s favorite.  Indeed, I remind my wife that it will all change in a flash—and I really believe that—in part to stay surprised by his splashes of affection and grace and contentment.    But it is also exhausting.  Because he watches me.

He looks at me.  And while he’s looking, he’s developing a view of his father.  I’m becoming more and more okay with this.  It’s a part of the deal.  Of course, I’m a man of growing faith, and I believe that all of life, yours and mine, is seen.  We are noticed.  And being seen, being noticed, is a deep need.  It’s a need and a fulfillment.  That’s why it hurts when we aren’t seen, when we’re ignored or overlooked at some fundamental level.

Yet our lives are witnessed by Someone other than our kids or friends or coworkers.  I believe that that first Audience matters most.  And yet my son is a reminder that being seen is so regular.  So frequent.  So often.  His watchful eyes, staring and unrelenting, display love under observation.  And I don’t enjoy being watched.  The boy’s eyes are changing me.  Everyday, more and more, I want my life to count for the God in and through that kid.  But the question persists.  When he sees me, what does he see?

by Michael

Question For The Week

Am I wrong for despising the pacifier?  I still remember that we had taken it from the boy, safely removed it from his mouth, back in January.

He got passed it.  He was beyond it.  He was fine.  Then he got sick.  And Dawn gave him the thing.  It was a moment of weakness probably.  I don’t think I was home.  I don’t think I found out until some time the next day.  I have a rule about not going into his room when he’s down for bed.  So I wouldn’t have found the thing stuck in his mouth until he popped his head up above the blanket flapping over his crib, his cheeks and lips folding up into a smile I couldn’t see because the white circle.

“Take that out,” I said, using my fathering voice.  He took it out.  And that started a ritual for us.  He’d wake up and call for us.  If I came in, I’d tell him to remove the pacifier.  He would.  One day it turned into the nonverbal gesture of my finger falling from my mouth.  And then, later, I wouldn’t even need to do that.  He’d see me turn the corner to his room that has no door, and he’d remove it when he saw me.  He still does it.  If he has it in his mouth and I’m around, the thing comes out without request.

I’m good at holding on to small memories like that—that being my wife returning the plug to the boy.  I’m a little too good at it actually.  I bring it up from time to time.

I say that it was a mistake to give it to him.  I say that I didn’t give it to him and that I’ve never actually given it to him since we took it from him, except for twice maybe, even though I don’t physically remove the thing from his crib.

I’m good at keeping a commitment.  And every time I see that pacifier, it’s a symbol of a commitment discarded.  He doesn’t need it.  I know he doesn’t because I’ve put him to bed without just to get proof for those women who I love and who love him.  If he drops it out of the bed, I pick him up and tell him to get it himself.  When he wakes up at night, crawling and scraping for the thing, I’ll put him on the floor and tell him to walk around the bed and get it.  “No light,” I say.  I have to include some punishment for him waking me up.  And he will get it.

Am I wrong?  It’s his pacifier.  I got rid of mine years ago.

Since January we’ve had these false attempts to take the thing.  But the grandmothers got in with Dawn to prevent success.  They did their own thing, when their own thing was secretly my wife’s thing.  They all colluded to keep my son’s mouth shut with a mini plastic nipple, making it a “necessity” for bedtime.  As I’ve said to them and to you in the paragraph above, it’s not a necessity.  He’s got them fooled.

At least they abide by the law I laid, I told myself.  “He only gets it when he’s in the bed.”  Success.  It’s interesting how I’ve started redefining my words since the boy came along.

by Michael

Beautiful Memory of Sleep

I turn and hide from the light as it streaks through the curtain.  I hear them but I pretend they aren’t there.  Over to my left, through the closet, in the bathroom.  My wife’s not there.  She’s not looking at the mirror, comb in her hand, doing what she does daily.  And my son is not there, talking or singing or watching his mother do the familiar ritual that combines with everything else she does or is to make her lovely.

I pull the spread over my head.  I cannot breathe.  I poke my nose through a partition and try to establish warmth because I’m cold even though it’s not cold.  I hear the boy pattering about.  He’s saying something.  I don’t want to hear him.  It’s too early for him to talk, and so much.  He’s explaining something to his mother.

I glance at my wife.  She doesn’t see me.

The boy is walking about the place.  He pulls out something noisy, and I hear Dawn saying that it’s too early for that.  Those are my words she’s borrowing, but I’m trying to fall back into a rest that is rejecting me.  I can’t tell what she’s forbidding, and I can’t locate the dream or the sleep slipping away in the bright light.

My internal rule is to keep the house as quiet as possible during these parts of the day when the clock says morning but my body says no.  Dawn is quiet too.  She knows how to prepare, from start to finish, without disturbing me.  It’s the boy who’s non-compliant.

On most days he follows my lead.  He’ll sleep until that last moment when Dawn twinkles keys from the platter holding them, signalling to the kid that he must wake up and say goodbye.  He may spend a moment with Dawn, being changed or sipping milk from a cup under her gaze.  She’ll whisper things to him, before announcing something to me because she knows I’m awake but fighting it.  She knows that her departure—the clinking of the keys, the whistling of a plastic bag or the crumpling of a paper one that keeps her lunch safe and near, the clicking of the lock—rouses me and sometimes him.  If I have my way, all of that ends quickly and with me putting him and me back to bed.  I can usually sleep another fifteen and wake up feeling like fifteen minutes was an hour.  He may sleep longer, and I’ll walk through a part of my routine, forcing myself to wake up, to make tea, to pull out oatmeal or to cut fruit.  I hardly even remember what sleeping in was.  It’s a vague notion, somewhere still deep, going deeper, and I think I’ve almost relinquished the beautiful memory altogether.

Today I was up, made the bed, and skulked around.  I groaned, the universal sign that I’m not really awake and that I’m not reliable for conversation.  Dawn goodbyes to me and to the boy.  She tells me that he needs to be changed.  I tell her in my head that I can smell him, but these words take too long to come to me because they’re still underneath the spread, behind the light, looking for darkness and sleep.

by Michael

Seeing Familiar Faces

Yesterday was a bad day for Bryce.  Maybe terrible is a better word.

It started for him (and us) just after 6am.  The time is important.  Have I ever mentioned that I’m not a morning person?  That I wasn’t when we received Bryce and that I still am not?  Well, I dressed him while his mom finished preparing herself.  By the time she was booting her feet, I was zipping his jacket and putting him in the stroller.  He was clueless as to what was happening.  I had explained to him what the day would be like, but he just kept smiling.  He had no concept of daycare.  He couldn’t tell, even by one of my serious tones, that I was approaching the idea with some very large fears.

He was yipping and singing and when I opened the door, he was glad to leave at that ungodly hour, with his mommy.  I closed the door, wondering how it would go.  I emailed Dawn after she arrived at work and asked.  I was impatient so I called her after fifteen minutes, when she was writing the response.

I had just come from visiting another daycare provider.  We’re looking around for a place.  Primarily because the boy is getting old enough to interact with more kids on a regular basis.  He was in daycare yesterday because his grandmother (that is, my mother; Dawn’s mother is grannie) was away.  She’ll be away tomorrow too.  Nonetheless, I had just left rooms full of kids, and my kid was never far from my mind.  I knew what he would do.  I knew because he did it to me last week when I left him for a couple hours at a retreat.  He didn’t know those people so he screamed and screamed and screamed.  When Dawn told me that he wailed as she left, one of my fears yelled at me.  It was only after 9—the day would be torture.

We had planned for me to pick them up at 5pm.  I’d go back to my office for our prayer meeting, after taking them home.  But before I drove back into downtown, we had talked.  I had gotten the run down from Dawn.  Bryce had cried for multiple hours that morning.  He continued to cry at other points throughout the day.  He had commanded the attention of the same caregiver all day long.  He hadn’t eaten.  At all.  He denied their breakfast.  He spit out his mashed potatoes and said no to the chicken for lunch.  He stayed awake while the other kids slept.  He was rocked and blanketed and pacified, but he wouldn’t sleep.  Until his little legs could run no longer and he fell into a troublesome nap of twenty minutes.

Remember, he got up at 6am.  He was up through the bus ride downtown with so much to see, so many people to greet.  He was yelling when Dawn left and he kept yelling.  By the late afternoon, he slept for twenty minutes.  Normally he’d sleep for two hours.

It wasn’t all bad.  He didn’t do any art, but he did wave at a few people.  He did show the tag on his blanket to some of the folks, and he did explain that “Daddy work,” I suppose his way of explaining where the old guy who was responsible for him spent his time.

I got there before Dawn.  I went in and asked if Dawn had arrived.  “You’re Bryce’s father?” the woman asked.  I nodded and said, “You probably need her to come, right?”  I saw on her face an answer different from the one she gave.  She knew I was Bryce’s dad.  I was, uh, in a word, black.  There may have been one or two other black kids in the daycare, but they knew all their parents.  She didn’t know me.  I had to belong to Bryce.  But why would she give me my son?  I wouldn’t want her to.  But I could tell they were ready enough to give him over.

It felt like forever, waiting in that hallway.  My wife was in there, getting a sheet that captured his day in notes.  She was listening as they re-told her how Bryce had done.  I wanted to be in there, but I was trying to stay illegally parked.  I was in and out of the lobby, making sure I didn’t see the orange-vested enemy.

Dawn came out, Bryce in her arms and seeing me over her shoulder.  She put him down and he ran to me.  I knelt down and greeted him, holding him for a while, whispering and saying that I heard it was a long day.  He was so happy.  I mean the kid was pleased that we’d come.

I told Dawn that he probably had a baby flashback to when we went on our vacation a couple months ago.  He probably thought we wouldn’t come back.  He probably thought he’d never see familiar faces again.  He couldn’t help but love us, run to us, and sing and yay all the way to the car.  Of course, the melting started in the bath tub, but we had successfully fed him at least two meals for dinner and had him in the bed one hour from having signed him out of that horrible place!

by Michael

Bryce’s First Retreat

After a breakfast of oatmeal and bite-sized chunks of honeydew, we walked down the green carpeted hall.  Another pastor-father passed me, grinning and saying the same thing he said the night before, “They have child care!”  He walked briskly from the room where I was headed.  His three children were there.  I heard them playing, though they weren’t noisy at all.  No, they needed my son for noise.  He would lift the sound level by his own voice.  He would teach three children from one family what noise was.

There were blocks of all colors and games and bright toys along one wall.  Two staff members, a married couple who explained to me that they had nine grandchildren, one of whom was the same age as Bryce, wrote his name and took his bag.  I explained that yes, he could have snacks.  I said that there was a pacifier in extreme situations, though I, as always, was secretly embarrassed by this admission.  I still wish he did not use the thing, but he does.  It doesn’t kill him.  Let’s hope it doesn’t alter his development in the long run.  I pointed to where I kept the sucky cup, which isn’t a sippy cup because a straw pops up.

None of the other children had bags.  At first it was another small sign that I was at a Pastors and Spouses retreat without my wife.  I had those signs already that morning and the night before.  My explanation to colleagues became common.  Dawn couldn’t get off work.  Dawn has class “tomorrow night” or “tonight,” depending on when I answered the familiar question.  But it wasn’t a sign that I was wifeless or that Bryce was motherless for the retreat.  I had a bag, simply, because I knew my kid.  I packed his water and a banana and some pudding.  I included enough diapers and wipes.  He would only be there for two hours, but I knew this boy.  He would be a challenge, potentially.

I turned to walk out while he was busy playing.  I came back when we had a break, an hour and something later.  I listened for his scream as I descended the hill from the center to the building where childcare and lodging were.  Nothing yet.  He wasn’t yelling through the stones.  That was good.

At the bottom step to the basement level where the noise and playmakers were, I looked both ways like I was sneaking, like I was taking something that wasn’t mine to take.  I wanted to go undetected.  My thought was to stick my head in the room, get a thumb pointed up, and return to the next session.

But Bryce was behind me as I edged toward the room.  He was in the arms of a grandfather and new friend, Dave, who I heard saying, “There’s daddy.”  It was too late to hide, though I tried as I turned around.  Bryce was already reaching for me.  He had been crying.  He was still sniffling, and when he took to my neck, I saw the dribble under his nose and the strips of dried tears down his cheeks.  I felt a twinge of regret that I had not been there, that I had left my kid with these others who he did not know.

I got the usual and expected questions.  Is he sleepy?  He wasn’t.  He had almost two more hours before a nap grabbed him.  Then, the grandfather and new friend said something that sounded good to me, better than the half compliments, half sermons I had heard that morning about spending time with my son or about how fathers weren’t as involved as they should be.  He said, “Oh, it looks like he just wanted his daddy.”

Back in the room with the wall of toys, one of the staff folks asked if I had ESP.  No, I told her, I just know this guy.  I changed his diaper.  When we came back from the changing, he launched into the toys that were in every corner by then.  I saw something called Lincoln Logs, and there was a tiny town being built on a table that the kids had abandoned.

Bryce started drawing with his new friend and playing with one of the other children who had a pink and brown box of somethings I couldn’t see.  He found a truck, knelt down, and started pushing it the way he did when we visited the Poethigs down the hall the other day.  “Vroom vroom,” he whispered, as he rolled over the large rolling television that was playing something from Disney.  Then the boy came over took a pen and tried to swipe the taped paper with all the kids names and ages.  I asked him to leave it.  He kept the pen, deciding that I meant the paper.  His new friend and adopted for the day grandfather figure took him to the board.  They started drawing, Bryce with his back to me and me, suddenly, grateful that I paid attention every now and then to the kid’s rhythms.

Before I left at Dave’s suggestion—“You can sneak out, dad because things should be fine”—I heard a mumble or two from the great adults who gave themselves to do what I couldn’t.  “Maybe he just needed a dry diaper.  Maybe he just needed his dad.”  I, again, chose the second answer and I walked out with that in my ears.  And Bryce didn’t cry or wail or scream—for about another ten minutes—until I was too far away to hear him.

by Michael

Mondays With My Boy #11

I suggested that we have lunch as a family since I was taking the boy up to a Pastors and Spouses Retreat.  It was my final requirement for our denomination’s ordination, which happened in June.  I had to attend our conference’s (i.e., region’s) retreat.  It worked best that Bryce attend since they had childcare, since Dawn had class on Tuesday evening, and since she couldn’t get away from school or work.  It would have proved difficult to find childcare for that weird slice of hours before our grandmothers arrived on their given days to be with the boy.  Dawn leaves for work two hours earlier than they’re used to arriving.

We picked up Dawn and had lunch, as we’ve done a few times before.  It was cute that Bryce knew we were outside his mom’s building.  He pointed and called for her.  Two or three times.  He yelled and yayed when she opened the door to greet him.

After we ate, Bryce began a slight melting; let’s say softening.  He transitioned to a full meltdown after Dawn exited the car.  His hand was pointing, following her, his screams were screaming, and she had turned to see what my life was to be over the next who knows what while I drove to Lake Geneva.  I thought to myself, this has to be easier.

We were passing Garrett’s popcorn by the time I pulled his cup from the holder under my arm.  “Want water?” I asked.

His arms reached out, thankful to have something.  He knew that I wasn’t into the pacifier movement his mother and his other loved ones participated in.  He quieted down for most of the commute, delaying his I’m bored whimpers for the last fifteen minutes.

People love my son.  Well, people probably love most kids his size.  After all, those kids tend to belong to someone else so that it’s easy to enjoy a cute-faced boy or girl in five-minute increments.  When we got to Covenant Harbor, Bryce was loved.  And I remember thinking what I’ve thought before about my denomination—that I’m grateful I get to be in ministry with others who care so well.  I knew that these folks weren’t the type to love for a little while.  These pastors and ministers and staff workers had been practicing love for the long haul.

Bryce got his name tag.  He went around introducing himself, in a language only other babies understand.  I laughed at my colleagues who tried to listen for his words.  We’d debate meanings between us, and I’d give up trying to know what he meant.  We unpacked and went to dinner where Bryce was preoccupied with getting more milk than I would allow and where a lovely woman and minister, Rev. Slaughter, went to get him a banana when he reached for hers.  She also brought a slice a pie (Bryce likes whipped cream now) and a plum and a pear, whispering, “Just in case.”

We were about done with dinner by then.  The banana finished him.  He had eaten less than I’d liked to see him eat.  But he has been doing that lately, eating more at breakfast and lunch than dinner.  He was waving and talking so much to Kathy behind him that she left her table to sit across from us.  He insisted on being in my lap, which he never does.  Kathy tried to ask me questions, tried to engage Bryce.

As I think about it, my responses to her conversation probably sounded like baby language.  I could hardly hear what people at my table were going on about, much less have a direct conversation with another person with Bryce doing stuff he never does.  It was enough to pay attention to the boy.  It was harder than usual, when he’ll eat what you put in front of him and when he’ll turn around when you tell him to and when he’ll happily devour his meal in his seat.

After dinner I let him stay up a little later than routine.  We were supposed to hear music and sing together.  But the worship started with reports and talking, so Bryce started his own talking in the large gym.  He ran to greet the other kids.  He sang to himself, trying, I think, to get the show going since I explicitly told him there would be music.  In the end, we had to leave after a half hour without singing.  He did have to go to bed.  So while we walked down the hill from the Jackson Activity Center, night time sweeping us into a cool embrace, we sang our little walking song.  Don’t ask me to sing it.  It’s our song, and actually it really does sound like language only babies understand.

by Michael

Mondays With My Boy #9

Monday two things worth noting happened.  First, I concluded that going to the grocery store in the morning on a Monday means I will finish shopping having experienced very little congestion.  We ran off to the store after breakfast and before nap time.  It was an experiment to see how much I could accomplish in the slim window between these very important events in the boy’s routine.  It was an experiment in whether I broke the law to accomplish shopping and returning to abide by the boy’s routine.

Now, you may know that he and I have been to the grocery store before during these time frames.  The one thing different was that we didn’t go to the neighborhood grocer.  We had to go to another store, a store I’ve developed an affection for because they have a produce section, with great sales, as big as my community’s entire grocery store.  Off we went.  It worked.  We survived and Bryce got to his nap.  Late but he made it without melting.

Second, me and Bryce buckled into the car in the afternoon and went to the Lincoln Park Zoo.  For some reason, I forgot to take his stroller.  On the way to the voo, I remembered that I was strollerless and explained to the kid that we’d be doing a lot walking.  After exiting the Drive, I lectured the boy on how important it was, in general, to never pay for parking when he could avoid it.  I spoke like the father I will be, later on in life, the one who reluctantly hands over a set of keys–with a series of instructions (they’ll probably be podcasts by then) and diagrams and a file of personally implemented drivers tests since the DMV only does half the job.  We parked a few blocks away from the zoo.  Everybody else, it seemed, had the idea I had.  Did you know that it costs $17 to park for 31 minutes to 3 hours at the only free zoo in Chicago?

I carried him most of the way from the parking spot.  I told him we only had enough time to walk toddler-like in the zoo.  I’ll get us there, I told him, and then we can walk as slowly as you like.  We stepped over ten thousand leaves, crunching and cracking, until we entered the place.  Bryce wanted to bend down and pick up rocks.  So we did that.  Then we went to see zebras and a host of animals that I cannot name.  They were ugly, the animals.  They weren’t monkeys or lions or snakes.  We saw those the first time we had a family outing to the same zoo.

He made friends as he does, waving and speaking to people I wouldn’t have if he weren’t with me.  He flirted with women and extended his hand to men.  It was entertaining, walking through that invisible but potent cloud of stink.

After leaving, we crossed the street and played at the park.  There were a lot of people at the park.  We went to the swings directly, his preferred park toy.  His arms went up and I slid his legs through the holes.  He likes letting go of the swing for some reason now.  I told him several times that I was pushing hard, that he’d fall, that I’d laugh, and that his mother would be mad at him.  His response?  Little fingers still unwrapping.  I’d stop to underscore the point; then he’d re-wrap those hands around the links and we’d swing.

He climbed up the stairs to the slide, stopping and relying on me because he knew I would help lift him.  We don’t have stairs in our house and I keep wondering when he’ll learn to walk up and down stairs and whether I’ve set him up to miss some major developmental milestone because we live on one level.  I think of those tests they give us at his doctor’s office and conclude that the next one (indeed the one on our counter now that’s waiting for one of us to complete it) will ask about how well our boy walks up and down the stairs.  One of us will have to circle that no.  Our boy will fail the little test and we’ll be the cause of it because we live in a building with an elevator, because we live in a unit without an upstairs.  This goes through my mind while I’m standing behind him at green staircase connected to the double slide and advanced version of what used to be monkey bars, cheering him for the steps he’s taking, feeling those tiny fingers of his holding mine before I re-place his hands on the bar and try to teach him how to do this on his own.

Bryce met a dog named Bella.  The owner lady said something about how much Bella loved children.  Bella sat there, knowing what was coming, tail already wagging.  She rolled to her side when Bryce approached, taking in his love.  He patted and rubbed and jumped back.  He did this again and again and again and again.  This was the last thing we did at the park.  I started telling him that we had to walk to the car, that we would pick mommy up from work today.  He looked up when he heard mommy but his eyes dropped back down to Bella when he didn’t notice mommy anywhere.  Pat, pat, pat.  Bella lying there, turning and tail-wagging.

I picked him and knew leaving would be a scene.  His whine eased out as a slight warning.  Reason wouldn’t work.  So I outwitted him, still able to exercise more thought than him at this point in our relationship.  This will one day turn.  I picked him all the way up off the ground, sang something about him flying, and threw him up and up and up, catching him, throwing him, catching him, throwing him.  I stepped out of the gates with each throw and didn’t stop until we were a block away.  He was giggling until we got to the corner.  He looked around—where are we, he wanted to ask.

I cleaned our hands, thinking of my wife and what she would say about Bella and all that patting.  Then I opened a banana and we ate, walking back to the car.