Month: September 2014
A Klingon Christmas
It’s true. I’m a recovered TOS Trekkie. The proverbial “old school” Star Trek fan.
My ridiculous love affair with this pop-culture phenomenon finds it roots back in the late 70’s of the previous century. That being said… I shall say no more about it. This is about a little girl. A baby girl. A girl who loves to be close to the ones she loves.
Amber is our fourth child and third daughter. She is the evidence of God’s grace to us. After rocketing into our world at birth, she settled into a nice nuzzling routine of being physically close to us. She loved to be held. She never wanted to be far from either of us. It was obvious from the beginning that her love language was touch. She was always comforted the most when held.
Bedtime was no exception. Actually, bedtime was my domain. Marm had the kids all day long while I was gone. The night belonged to me, and I loved it, for the most part.
I don’t remember how it all started and that’s frustrating to me. Looking back I wish I had paid closer attention, but when you’re in the moment you just don’t think like that. What I do recall is the long-standing memory it created. When it was time to put Amber to bed I would take her to our room and walk her. Her crib was beside our bed. I would gently pace with her and then lay her down. She would promptly cry wanting to be held again. I would pick her up and walk her some more. She would fuss a little and I would start to sing to her. She would fuss and I would change the song. She would fuss again and I would change the song again, and you get the point.
It must have been around the beginning of the Christmas season when I stumbled onto the winning combination that would become the tradition. One night I started to sing White Christmas to her. She loved it! No, seriously, she L-O-V-E-D it! Who knew that a “wee babe in arms” would know the difference between song melodies, but she did. I would walk back and forth singing this song over and over and over again to her. If I changed the song, she fussed and refused to fall asleep. It was White Christmas and only White Christmas.
This was our ritual for the next year or so. Every night I would walk her and sing White Christmas. I would spend upwards of an hour each night holding her, singing to her, at times being frustrated with her because I was tired and she wouldn’t fall asleep as fast as I wanted her to. If she wasn’t fully asleep in my arms, I couldn’t lay her down. It was exhausting at times, and it was hard to do every day. It was also one of those magically special times that only comes around once. I would never have an opportunity like this with her again. I was able to hold, cuddle, talk, pray, and sing to my daughter every night for an hour. She was the proverbial captive audience. I don’t regret any of it, except my moments of impatience, and would jump at the opportunity to do it again.
It comes as no shock that to this day White Christmas is Amber’s favorite Christmas song. I don’t know when it was first stated , but its fair to say I was the one to appropriately coin the phrase, “She’s a Klingon.This was a term of endearment of course tossed her way because of the obvious. It was a long time before I would sing White Christmas again. I pretty much had my fill for a while. Now years later when I do hear it I smile and remember our Klingon Christmas bedtime. It was totally worth it!
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Playing Opossum
“Just wait until your father gets home!” was a line Martha never used on our children. Early on in our marriage we had discussed how important it was that the kids look forward to me coming home. We believed that statements like that would create the opposite effect. Looking back I think we were right.
During the early “daycare” years it was very common for there to be “rent-a kids” still on site when I rolled in from my work day. It was also inevitable that as soon as I stepped through the door the kids wanted to wrestle. Most often this would include three to six kids all slobbering over themselves in the hope of literally jumping up and down on me.
Some of my fondest memories are from these times. We’d all roll around on the floor tangled in huge human knots for the better part of half an hour. Giggles, laughter, and the occasional high-pitched scream were the language of the moment. Dickens was right. “These were the best of times.”
I did have an infrequent problem when it came to these wrestling matches however. Some days I was simply exhausted. I don’t mean that end of the day weariness that was the norm. No, this was different. I was literally too tired to play. On top of that, I knew I was grumpy. That’s the worst. I have a mean grumpy.
It was hard to turn them down even on days when I felt like this. It was impossible to say no to those eager little faces. Yet, I knew it was only a matter of time before my grumpy was going to get the best of all of us. I really didn’t want that to happen. Thank the Lord, the answer presented itself rather simply one day.
I gave in to the usual requests and begging to be the target of their assault. I lay down on the living room floor waiting for the ritual sounds of running feet, the short silence that came while they were airborne, and the sudden shock on impact that usually sent them tumbling off the other side of my pummeled body. What usually followed was me slowly rising like a monster from the deep and chasing after them. This day I didn’t move. I lay there still as stone. The sudden silence in the room was proof that this was something new, and uncertain. It was a challenge not to smirk.
The whispers began immediately.
“What’s your dad doing?” asked David
“Don’t know,” answered Aaron.
At this point all the kids began to talk to me, trying to get me to chase them. Nothing happened. I was still and silent with only one eye slit open ever so slightly. I could hear them sneaking closer.
“Touch him. I think he’s dead,” said one of them.
I felt a tentative poke from a foot on my foot. Then I felt a firmer tap from another foot against my side. More pokes came as their confidence rose. Suddenly there were kids all over the top of me punching, pulling, kicking and I even got a bite from one of them. Still I lay motionless and silent.
They were scared now. The pleading began for me to wake up. They began to think I might really be dead. I was surprised that they hadn’t lost interest yet. I guess I figured they would soon, so I did the unexpected at this point. I reached out suddenly and grabbed an ankle tightly in my hand. The shriek from David was heart-felt. I’d totally scared the pants off the little bugger. He squealed and squirmed. wriggled and twisted while hollering for help from his stunned friends. They all grabbed him and started pulling against my hold, or grabbed my hand and tried to unbend my fingers. It was all I could do not to burst out laughing and ruin the effect.
Then, just as suddenly I released my hold and went limp again. Now it was game on for real. The kids loved it. It became a favorite for all of us. What they didn’t know at the time was that all I was doing was getting some much-needed rest while I lay there on the floor. To them I was playing dead. For me I was simply sleeping or close to it anyway.
I had tripped over the answer and it worked brilliantly. The grumpy had been defeated and one of our favorite games invented simply by playing opossum.
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Out of the Mouth of Babes
I’ve found that “truth” is often spoken from the least likely of people and can catch me off guard. It causes me to pause, or in some instances takes my breath away completely. None-the-less it is still the “truth”. I remember vividly one such moment in our family adventure that rocked my world.
It was a normal Sunday morning when the three older kids were little. I was a part-time associate pastor on staff at our local church at the time. My responsibilities there were varied and shall we say, plentiful. My internal pressure to have it together and be on time was a constant nag. A great stress creator.
We were all getting ready to go to church like usual. The pitch was fevered. The rush was apparent. It was that typical Sunday morning frenzy. So much energy being spent in getting all of us ready. After all it was the “big” event. The chaos was palpable. There were only 5 of us at the time, but it might as well have been 50. Trying to get us all moving in the same direction in a timely manner was like herding cats. It was never going to happen.
I know I’m not the only one to experience this ritual. So many of you reading this know exactly what I am talking about. You could write this post yourself. And here’s the kicker. As those dedicated to the religious it is almost our God given duty to blame this chaos on Satan himself.
“The devil just wants to mess up our day! God has great things for us and Satan is mad about it.” can be a commonly offered rational for the mayhem. Never mind that my internal pressure is building because I have an over exaggerated religious sense of obligation hanging over me. After all, we are staff so we have to get this together. People will be watching!
So, all the while as we are “herding the cats” there is a sharpness in my voice, frustrated stares in my eyes, impatience in my posture, all giving off a definite sense that the kids are the problem here. They should know better by now. We go to church every Sunday! This isn’t new!
Come on people. Get it together! This was my state of mind at the time.
Well, in spite of everything to the contrary, we did eventually aim ourselves in the same direction. We headed out the door and up the steps to the mini-van. We’re all getting ourselves situated; strapping in the kids to various car seats and boosters. Snugging down the seat belts and making sure we had accounted for everyone. Martha and I took our seats and did the same. As I started the van I turned and said to the kids over my shoulder,
“Smile everybody.”
And out from the back seat came the reply from our dear sweet Annie,
“Why Daddy? We aren’t at church yet.”
And… there it was in all its unadulterated glory.
In that one simple honest question the truth had been unearthed. The lie had been unmasked. It felt like I was just sucker punched in the gut. I was teaching my children to be religious. Simply put, what things look like are more important than the truth. Ouch! Having people think we had it together was more important than how I actually was treating my own family. If there was ever a good time to swear, that would have been it.
Truth is truth plain and simple. Its source doesn’t change it, even when it comes from out of the mouth of babes.
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Set Depth at 350 Feet
“Sonar contact bearing 010. Orders Captain?”
Like a familiar smell that triggers a distant memory those words plunge me back in time. Huddled around a small 14″ color TV hooked up to the 5″ floppy disk drive and in turn to the keyboard, we sat mesmerized. We were guiding our Seawolf class submarine loaded with Harpoon and Tomahawk missiles and a full complement of Mark 48 torpedoes into enemy waters. It was dangerous and required complete concentration. A single misguided command, or worse, a wrong keystroke and we were headed to the bottom. Here we sat side by side for hours at a time; father and 10 year old son shoulder to shoulder searching the ocean for enemy targets.
I’m certain that when author Tom Clancey wrote his novel Red Storm Rising he didn’t have my son and me in mind. I don’t know if he had envisioned a Commodore 64 based video game built around his story either. Regardless, this game was the source of endless hours of fun for us.
I can still see us laying on our bellies or sitting cross-legged on Aaron’s bedroom floor while staring intently at the TV screen. I remember us being hunched over the computer when it sat on the desk in our dining room . We peered into that screen like it was going to talk back to us at any moment. We were entranced by a different world.
Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to play several video games with my son . Some I liked, some I tolerated, and some I won’t play again. Red Storm Rising however, is different. This game holds a very special place in my heart.
It wasn’t so much the game itself, though it was full of excitement, tension, and moments of sheer panic. It was mostly that we were spending time together and having fun at it. The game controls were complex enough that we had to divide the responsibilities between us. Without knowing it at the time we were having to depend on one another in order to stay safe in those hostile waters. Both of us were busy with our respective duties and yet had to work together to accomplish the mission.
Here in open waters it was more like two friends playing together than it was me being the dad and Aaron being the son. There was no strain in the relationship; just a simple ease we had together as we spent the time. We would laugh ourselves silly when we couldn’t keep the sub from being sunk . Oh, we would try frantically to keep her afloat, but to no avail. Then we would look at each other with those questioning eyes and eager faces that said,
“Let’s do it again!” And off we would go on a new mission.
Those years are gone now. The game for the most part is ancient history. What isn’t gone is the ease we still have when we are together. I’m grateful for that. All that time spent on his bedroom floor has helped pave the way for our relationship today.
Aaron is a grown man now with a wife and baby daughter. Yet in spite of all our current adult responsibilities and life challenges there’s still that little twinkle that comes into our eyes when we hear,
“Sonar contact. Orders Captain?”
“Son… set depth at 350 feet,”
What’s a favorite time you’ve spent with your children?
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Real People Trapped in Little Bodies
Reflection can be a powerful tool. Being born in the late 50’s my grammar school years, as they were called back then, were in the decade of the 60’s. This was the era of the original “Hot Wheels Cars” and full size “G.I. Joes”. Real metal “Tonka” trucks ruled the world. Cartoons like Yogi Bear, The Bugs Bunny Road Runner Hour and Space Ghost were some of the choice Saturday morning TV offerings. It was also the era of “children are to be seen and not heard.”
It’s ironic how as children we’ll “pick things up” without even realizing we did it. Often its not until later in life we begin to see what we picked up and are confronted by it, sometimes rather starkly. It was here in one such moment that the wisdom of the 60’s crashed headlong into the heart of Jesus.
Annie, our first-born, was three-ish. This made Aaron our second born infant-ish. We were out on a family excursion with the intent to buy Annie a new pair of shoes. Now this was nothing new or unusual, we had bought shoes for the kids before. What made this outing different was that Annie was involved in picking them out for herself. A fact I truly became aware of only too late.
Annie and Marm (Martha’s nickname given to her by her nephew when he was little) were having a ball. They were jabbering together about this shoe and that one while moving freely up and down the aisle. Boxes littered the floor. Most had one shoe teetering sideways within while the other one was laying where it had been dropped some 2 to 3 feet away. This was shopping at its finest for Annie. She was having a blast.
I too was shopping, but with much less enthusiasm. I was thinking more along the line of finding an appropriately sturdy pair and then going home rather soon. She was, after all, only 3 so it really didn’t matter too much which pair we bought. This should be simple. I walked over to the girls with Aaron in tow in the stroller and showed the ladies my offering. Annie wrinkled up her nose without hesitation. These definitely were not for her. I was insistent about my choice and foisted them on them both rather sternly.
“ These are good shoes,” I insisted. “ They will wear well and are a nice brown color too.” This all seemed more than reasonable to me. I was having a hard time understanding all of the fuss.
“They’re ugly!”, Annie stated flatly, “and I don’t like them.”
I looked at Marm for the obvious support I thought she should lend me, but was startled by the look I saw in her eyes. Now I was really confused and was becoming more frustrated. I was thinking to myself that this isn’t that hard to do. Just pick out a pair, show them to Annie, she’ll be grateful and like them, and we all go home.
I expressed these sentiments to the both of them and was once again met with resistance. Annie wanted a different pair she had selected herself. In fact she was actually trying to decide between two different pairs she had picked out. By now I was getting hot around the ears. I thought we had come to buy shoes, not shop for them.
I certainly wasn’t thinking that Annie actually had an opinion about them herself. And, as painful as it is to say, that what she wanted was as important as what I wanted. I was turning the outing into a misery. I was crushing the joy out of my daughter. I could see it in her face, and I was lost as to what to do next. My default setting from the sixties was failing me badly.
It was here that Marm pulled me aside and gave me that look a wife gives to her husband when he’s being dumb. Then, thankfully, she brought me up to speed. Even though my daughter was only three at the time, she certainly had opinions and desires like everyone else. “Everyone else” meaning adults. Those opinions and desires MATTER. Sadly, I had left no room for Annie to be Annie. No room for her to make her own choices. I wanted what I wanted plain and simple. I wanted her to be seen but not heard.
It wasn’t that I didn’t know better at the time, and honestly, it didn’t take too long for me to remember that this was not the heart of Jesus when it came to kids. Jesus told the adults of his day to let the children come to him and to stop hindering them. In other words; back off people, the kids count too. The lesson learned that night was simple, and it laid the groundwork for a statement that Marm and I use often in regard to children. They are indeed … “real people trapped in little bodies.”
Curls & Capes 