Tag: daughters

Adding it all up

I’m not sure there is a math to moments. You can’t sum up your life or your heart with an equation, nor can you quantify those days that you feel like give you some semblance of why you are here.

I’ve had a habit of sitting on the deck and writing with coffee for a number of years now. There was the time that Anna, also an early riser, came out and asked if she could sit and write with me.

There was the time I was on my way out the front door for an early run, when Anna came down the steps asking if she could come too. We grabbed her bike, my longboard, the dog, and drove to St. Michaels Rails to Trails.

There was the time I won Wilco tickets and Anna, not really knowing who Wilco was, asked if she could go with me, and it became her first concert experience. All the leaf piles raked just so the girls could jump into them. Turning the back of the truck into a play room on a sunny day. Digging for sand crabs on any beach trip. Any time I have gotten anything about being a father remotely close to right, it has been the times when I didn’t let a moment pass us by; the times when I showed up, leaned in, and we created memories together. Any parent who hasn’t learned a huge lesson from listening to Harry Chapin’s “Cat’s in the Cradle,” should go listen to it right now. We don’t get that time, or those times, back.

When I look back on all the best moments in my life, almost none of them have been about me; there is almost always a “we” or an “us.” And so many of them have been about Anna and Ava.

Yesterday, May 13, Anna graduated from Easton High School, the same high school I graduated from 29 years earlier. Her graduation ceremony was co-opted by a pandemic, which also took the entire spring of her senior year. Honestly, the graduation ceremony for the Class of 2020 was maybe more special for being unique and because of the care of so many people who organized it.

Yesterday morning, before the girls were up, I read Jim Harrison’s poem, “Adding It Up.” He’s looking for a rubric, or some way to summarize his life.

“…two daughters, eight dogs,
I can’t name all that cats and horses, a farm
for thirty-five years, then Montana, a cabin,
a border casita, two grandsons, two sons-in-law,
and graced by the sun and the moon, red wine
and garlic, lakes and rivers, the millions of trees.”

His mind is already wandering from things that can be quantified–it’s a flawed math. And then he goes further into experiences which don’t fit equations at all. He talks about a hiding place underneath a huge stump, through which…

“I’ve watched the passing legs of sandhill cranes,
napping where countless bears have napped,
an aperture above where the sky and the gods
may enter, yet I’m without the courage to watch
the full moon through this space. I can’t figure
out a life.”

He finds and enters into a sacred space, where he has to pause, unsure. And that’s what parenthood, at it’s best, can do–create sacred spaces through which we watch our children grow and accomplish things, while also falling, failing, and getting hurt.

And I have to pause, unsure.

And all of those moments, every one of them, come together in a moment like graduating from high school; walking through that particular gateway that opens up the next part of life, and the world.

Fatherhood and church have both made me soft. But it’s a soft-heartedness I will take. When my father sends a card he’s written a note in to Anna; when her mom makes a photo memory board of so many of Anna’s friends and experiences through her 18 years; when her sister Ava–who doesn’t cry–gets teary before a photo; when my sister and her kids show up and turn the front yard into party central and have an impromptu social distancing back yard graduation picnic. It all makes my heart overfull and trips me up. But tripping on those moments helps me recognize them.

These are Anna’s moments, not mine. She drives them. But I get to be a part of them. When I think of what yesterday meant, what it means, through Anna’s struggles and accomplishments, which we watch as parents, but can’t fix or do ourselves; when I realize how little words can actually do or say about the biggest moments our hearts experience; I maybe get a glimpse of the things my parents watched and were a part of for my sister and me; and I can tell you how much more Anna’s graduation means to me than my own.

I hope my daughters figure out time travel

Empty parking lot off Idlewild Avenue. Parking curbs. Concrete. Asphalt. No people, so I pull out my time machine, step on, and the sound of polyurethane on pavement spins back decades. The sound, the vibration under foot, the feeling of cruising carelessly, for no reason except that it’s fun.

What are the things you do regardless of what anyone else thinks? Things you can’t wait to do, that bring you happiness, just by doing them.

Rolling up to a curb, I sit down with a pen, notebook, Mary Oliver’s “Thirst.” I look up.

“Clouds are not only vapor, but shape, mobility, silky sacks of nourishing rain. The pear orchard is not only profit, but a paradise of light. The luna moth, who lives but a few days, sometimes only a few hours, has a pale green wing whose rim is like a musical notation. Have you noticed?”

When Mary O. asks you a question, you do well to consider it. Do I take the time to notice what goes on around me? Really notice? There are everyday miracles, right here on Idlewild Avenue in an empty parking lot on a Sunday afternoon.

Those things that you do for you–how did you figure out what they were? And how long have you been doing them?

When I think back, some of the things I most love doing today, I started in my early teenage years: comic books, skateboarding, writing, reading, running, being on the water, just being outside. And it’s some form of those things that still fill me up a few decades later. Those things maybe as close to time travel as I will get. They connect me to past and future versions of myself. They mark a moment in time, but revisiting them, they create moments outside of time.

I don’t know if my daughters will figure out time travel. I hope they do. I hope they walk the same beaches (and new ones) over decades, and remember when their feet were smaller, their minds saw more colors, and there were fewer distractions. I hope they remember, connect, and see outside of time.

I land in the parking lot again. It’s not supposed to feel this warm in February. The day is a gift. I can hear life in the back yards of Aurora Street. If I get quiet enough I can hear the universe.

“He or she, who loves God, will look most deeply into His works.”

Mary Oliver

Maybe that’s it. We don’t need to stay at the surface. If we look deeper, we can lose ourselves. We find ourselves connected; to our past through memory; to our future through hope; to each other through God, who is Love.

Nothing gold can stay

“Nature’s first green is gold, / Her hardest hue to hold.”

Robert Frost might have had a magnolia tree in his front yard. I’ve never seen anything like it. Over the past week, it’s been in different phases of bloom and I just go out and stand underneath it in complete awe. It will only last a week or two, but man, what a week.

“Her early leaf’s a flower; / But only for an hour.”

Spring is a time for rebirth, for taking root and for growth. But within that, there is also the notion that it doesn’t last, like the magnolia tree in bloom, so appreciate it while it’s here. Be present. Feel the growth. Take the moment.

W.S. Merwin in Hawaii at the Merwin Conservancy. Image from Stefan Schaefer.

W.S. Merwin, one of the brightest shining, most brilliant, and most venerable American poets died recently. I met him briefly in Washington, DC, after hearing him read. I’d made it a point to catch him after work when I worked in the city. He was one of the voices; one of the lives worth emulating, or using as a model to find your own.

In a great New Yorker article, Casey Cep writes about Merwin’s writing and his effort to preserve Hawaiian landscape, “The palm forest, like Merwin’s poetry, has become a kind of prophetic stance against contemporary life: bearing witness to individual, almost foolish acts of creativity while devastation abounds.” We do what we can in the time that we have.

Sometimes I can connect the dots, sometimes I lose the picture. My reading list of late has included large parts of Luke’s Gospel, Henri Nouwen’s “Return of the Prodigal Son,” and legendary and/or mind-bending graphic novels, including Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev’s “Daredevil” run, Donny Cates’ “God Country,” and Jonathan Hickman’s “Fantastic Four.” I’ve never read Hickman, who is known for his epic story arcs for Marvel Comics. Marvel announced this past week that he is set to take over the X-Men this summer.

I’ve been thinking about the Faust/Faustus storyline a lot lately, where to gain unlimited knowledge, the seeker sells their soul to the devil. It has to deal with hubris, excessive pride, and pushing beyond the limits of where we should go. And Hickman plays that exact storyline out with Reed Richards in his Fantastic Four story. But when faced with the decision either come up with the answer to everything, to save the universe and feed his ego flashing his brilliance, or to be human, be with his family, Richards thinks back to the words of his father.

“All of my hopes and desires rest in you becoming what I am not. When you grow up, I expect more. Son, I expect better. I want you to be a better friend than I was. Be a better husband. Be a better father. Be a better man.”

Father-son, father-daughter messages hit me straight in the heart. And it makes me reflect on the prodigal son story, and how the father wants his sons to know his love, no matter what they’ve done. And that’s big.

For Lent this year, Fr. Bill Ortt at Christ Church Easton, has given out prayer stones during worship services. There are 11 different words and you choose without looking: love, peace, believe, remember, listen, forgive, hope, pray, heal, follow, grace. The idea is to use your word as a mantra during Lent. And to look up Scripture for your word that you connect with, and pray, reflect, and meditate on it for the season.

My stone is love. It’s not the one I expected or the one I would have picked. But it’s the one I needed. It’s what I need to remember and to focus on. I picked two verses.

John 13.34-35

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’

And

Corinthians 13:4-8

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. 

Those are big for me. Because it is easy for me to look past, to get too busy, to be in my head or deep in thought too often.

Finishing up Robert Frost’s poem:

Then leaf subsides to leaf. / So Eden sank to grief, / So dawn goes down to day. /  Nothing gold can stay.

Nothing gold can stay. And that’s true for spring. It’s true for knowledge and accomplishments. It’s true for the world. It’s true for almost everything we see around us.

But not for God. And not for love. “Love never ends.”

Sixteen

You are the ringleader. When I look up, you have cousins, kids, your sister, watching and following you around. You always make me laugh with what goofiness you come up with to run them through. From costumes to choreography, I don’t have a clue where you come up with it.

You are the curious one. Watching, listening atop the stairs, paying attention when no one realizes it.  You leash the dog and set out on foot. You are the sea glass explorer and the finder of odd things.

I rarely ever cried before you were born. Now I can’t watch movies with fathers and daughters in them; I am pretty well worthless in church if a sermon, song, or prayer hits the right note. That comes from being a father, which started with you. I guess the yelling comes from that too 🙂

I’m not sure how a father is supposed to feel about his oldest child turning 16. And I’m not sure how I feel about it, so I guess that’s about right. I feel like I remember turning 16 too well for you to be there already. My teenage years were full of bad decisions, adventures, opportunities, and dumb luck. You’ve avoided a lot of the bad decisions so far, for which I thank you.

My father knew a lot more about being a dad to a 16 year old than I do, or he didn’t let on otherwise. It’s a privileged place to look at my parents and how they did it and at my daughter and how she does it. I have a lot to learn.

I want to strangle you a fair amount of the time, but I recently learned it’s your amygdala I have to take it up with. I realize you are part of God’s way of teaching me patience at the same time you are teaching me about love and gratitude.

You care about people in ways that make me both humble and proud and make me worry, which is part of what parents do, especially with 16 year olds.

When you forget yourself, you do amazing things. I’ve seen it on the field hockey field, or stepping up to play goalie in lacrosse, or in a hospital with your sister. I hope you learn to trust that more.

Paddleboarding this past summer, just the two of us, brought out the kind of conversations, questions, laughter, that no one could have told me existed before I knew you.

You and others know this story, but it’s on my mind now: we were on our way into the Annapolis Mall, you were three and sitting backwards on Ava’s stroller looking at us, and out of nowhere, unprompted, you asked, “Why did God make us?” I didn’t know what to say. You caught me off guard. And then you answered, “Know why I think? I think because He was lonely.”

There is no amount of theology or learning that has ever said it better. And if we can know the love God felt and feels and how His loneliness disappeared, maybe you show me that.

Until it’s time to get ready for school in the morning 😉

When I look at you, turning 16, I see a lot of myself. But I see so much more, and someone totally different.

For your sixteenth birthday, I want things for you that I can’t possibly give you: happiness, love, friendship, wisdom, health, success, grace, hope, and laughter, to name a very few. I hope we can point you in the right direction to help you find those things and what they mean to you.

I have no idea where you will go in life or how you will decide to get there. That’s one of the coolest, most frightening, and beautiful things I have ever seen. You are growing up. And we get to be a part of it.