Levity

So I've been told that my posts are, at times, rather depressing. It's so incredibly strange, but it's the melancholy that inspires me to write which explains blog posts, many sermons, and most songs that I write and that I am drawn to. I'm not a down person, and I think I'm quite optimistic, but I do love gray sky days and driving in the rain.

But I'm trying to tell myself to force something happy today. So I'll relay a story that makes me laugh.

So Olivia (grade 1) comes home from school and she had sat through a anti-smoking session at some point during the day. She was informed about the ills of the tobacco industry and was coached on how to say no if someone offers her a cigarette. She didn't mention anything about saying no to cigars or chew so I'm on the lookout for the telltale lump in her cheek and making sure she doesn't get that princess spittoon she's been asking for.

Two days later, we're all sitting outside a Shopper's Drug Mart waiting for Julie when Olivia starts talking about how bad smoking is for you. So being a good counselor I initiated a little role play. "Hey Olivia", I said. "Would you like a cigarette?"

"No thanks."

"C'mon. It's cool to smoke."

"No, thank you. I don't want to smoke."

Everything had gone as she had been coached until her sister piped up.

"Dad. I'll take a cigarette."

Olivia freaks out at this point. "No, Grace! You don't want to smoke! Dad, she wants to smoke!"

I attempted to reassure my little zealous lobbyist that Grace was just joking around.

"Ok, Dad. Now I'll try to get you to smoke. Hey Dad, would you like a cigarette."

"No thank you", I promptly responded.

"C'mon! Everybody smokes. Just one?"

"No, Olivia. I do not want to smoke."

Then in the way that only Grace can make a statement: "Um, Dad. I would like a cigarette."

I couldn't contain myself. I'm laughing, Grace is not so sure what is so funny but she is smiling none the less and my eldest is fearing that her 4 year old sister should switch to Nicorette during Sunday mornings. It was a wonderful moment.

Now don't get used to this. But perhaps once in a while it would do me good just to lighten up.

Or maybe I should go light up...

Urgency is a beast (a general ramble)

Ok, I'm terrible at maintaining things. Look no further than the last time I posted a blog. Christmas eve I guess. Interesting that I'm feeling anticipation once again.

I don't really want to die. A shocking statement, I know. It's something that I know you've never heard before. My apologies for blowing your mind. But it's very true for me these days and it has been a growing issue for me. It has felt like a mouse gnawing on a piece of bait on the rotten end of a mousetrap. How many bites can it take before the light at the end of the mouse tunnel beckons?

It's not that I have an impending sense of death and doom. It's just that I have a sense that my life is but a fart in the wind; lingering in my nostrils and those unfortunate to occupy the space around me one moment and floating away the next. That's not to say my life stinks, but it's about as creative as I can get right now. My kids are growing up so fast and I'm growing older at (shockingly) an equal pace. I don't want them to grow up and start junior high, get their drivers license, meet some dashing young man, have kids of their own, experience their first kiss. And I'm ok with the order of life happening something like that, although squeeze a wedding in there please. And yet I really, really DO want them to experience life. I can't wait for them to give life a big kiss and to have it whisper a few secrets. It's just that life is so bloody temporal.

So urgency is a significant term for me these days. I feel a deep need to get important plans with Julie and the girls set in stone. I want to experience something significant with my kids every day that I spend some time with them. And yet, life goes on and with it is the mundane, the ordinary, the necessary. Renovations, house cleaning, paying the bills, etc., all need attention. So how does one balance all this stuff with things that feel much more important?

My co-worker, after I expressed some of my aches and pains to her, suggested that maybe I'm going through an early mid-life crisis. I'm only 35 though, so that doesn't really add up. But let's reconsider. My Dad passed away almost 7 years ago at the tender age of 73. I recall a couple of years ago doing some basic division and coming to the understand that half of 73 is...um...carry the 2...oh yeah 36.5. Hmmmmm. So I'll be 36 in less than a month. Ahah!! So according to my math and my Dad's life expectancy I am basically half-way. I'm thinking this is playing a role in my current dysphoria.

So many guys hitting the mid-lfe crisis it seems want to buy a sports car, get a rug to replace the hair they used to have and live life like they were twenty. I want to quit my job, take my kids out of school and buy an RV to travel the continent. I'm desparate to go to Disney, West Edmonton Mall, and any place else that promises that my dreams will come true. But how incredibly selfish is that? "Hey family, suspend what ever hopes and dreams you have an indulge me in experiencing life as I'm going to dictate it to you!" Who do I think I am?

So how do I live with a sense of urgency while not being a complete nutcase? No answers here yet, but I do know that I need to finish the house renos and clean the toilet. These things don't stop. I think I need to take care of myself from time to time which is something I know is a challenge for me. It's all a very precarious and difficult and almost impossible some days.

By the way, The Time Traveler's Wife is a terrible movie for someone struggling with the brevity of time.

More to come I'm sure...

Christmas Rant

Every year I make a gingerbread house with my kids. It's one of the highlights of the Christmas season... I think. It also drives me crazy since I'm a perfectionist and if you've every made a gingerbread house that's a bad mix. Throw in a 7 year old and a 4 year old and it's enough to make baby Jesus blush.

So typically I do it from scratch; mix the dough, cut the shapes, bake it, make own icing, etc. This year we bought a different house and have been neck deep in renovation purgatory which has drained the time and energy away from everything else (note it's been over a month since my last post). So I bought a gingerbread house kit, although with regret and a little guilt. The kit includes everything you need with all the pieces pre-cut and it just needs to be assembled and decorated with the included candy and icing. Quite frankly part of me feels like it's a stainless steel bed pan. Yes, it will do the job, but where is the love? Where is the love?

So this afternoon the kids and I tackled the commercial house and assembled it and decorated it. It looks like hell. The icing doesn't hold anything together. The candy is falling off. The roof opened up and swallowed the gumdrops lining the roof. The kids are thrilled and I am depressed. The pre-cut, sterile, gingerbread snowman and gingerbread man on the front lawn are looking at me with a smug glare. It matters not as I'm going to bite his incredulous head off in a couple of hours. I'm just hoping that this isn't some strange premonition and that all my renos are destined to end as the molasses laden house before me. I'm sure I'm going to go to the house on Monday and find that all the drywall has slid off the walls.

Here's the deal. I love Christmas and most of all I love the anticipation of Christmas. Part of the anticipation is doing all the rituals that herald the coming of Christmas day. The gingerbread house is a ritual and one that I will redeem next year with a love soaked, personable, homemade house.

I love Christmas. I love watching my kids more than anything get excited about Christmas. We propagate the myth of Santa with zeal and I love watching the kids put out the reindeer food on the lawn. It has sparkles so the reindeer can spot our house you see. I love putting out cookies and milk for the big guy. At the same time I also love hearing my kids talk about baby Jesus and in our house these two things are compatible. Santa brings presents, not salvation; gifts, not redemption. That's the baby Jesus' work and our kids are seeing that more and more. I think I am too.

My three favorite words are Grace, Mercy and Redemption. I can hardly speak them together without getting a chill and feel a little mist in the eyes. And this is the time of the year that those three ought to be on display more than any other time, and I think they are in many ways. I know I've experienced them in tangible ways this month more than the rest of the year from complete strangers. I hope that others have experienced that from me.

Merry Christmas to you and yours. May you enjoy friends and family over a good meal, good drink and good laughs. May you experience baby Jesus through those that you love and who love you.

The First Dent is the Deepest

I recall a word of wisdom from a legendary plumber in these parts when we were installing the sink in the drop-in center that I helped build about 4 years ago. After it was installed and the plumbing was hooked up I went over and tried out the taps. Yep, water was running, draining, doing everything a sink was to do. Then I noticed a healthy scratch in the brand new kitchen sink. "Wow, this sucks", I said out loud. I was pretty sure that the sink was damaged even before it was installed but now that it was in I wasn't about to take it out and return it. "Ah, it's no big deal," the plumber said. "It's like the first dent on your new truck. It hurts so bad at first, but then you don't even notice it after a while because the scratches and dents seem to come fast after that one." Now here's the money line: "You really want to avoid that first dent."

Recently Olivia has been experiencing a healthy dose of "girl politics" as they seem to be. Grade one. Geez they start early. We get a little bit of what's going on and, in many ways, it's just kids being kids and most of it is harmless. Unfortunately kids being kids means they're often emulating adults in their life which is likely a completely different post. Adults can be so
counter-productive to the health of children at times.

"You really want to avoid that first dent." What kills me as a Dad is that I don't have a clue when that first dent is going to made to my kids. It certainly isn't predictable and what leaves a mark for one person won't even leave a scratch on another. There's a distinct possibility that it's happened already. I just hope and pray that I wasn't the offending party without knowing it. And perhaps that's the worst part: you just never know even after the damage has been done. A sharp remark here, a poor thought out comment there and suddenly you're looking at the sink thinking, "now how did that get there?"

But we all get that first dent that leaves a historic mark on our souls. Looking back, maybe you can spot it and testify to the moment where the rest of the scratches and bruises started piling on. And if it was only the one, well, maybe we could heal up from it. But there are always more and more and they seem to somewhat get close to that original one, or at least that's how we tend to see it. Often depth and width of that first mark dictates much of how we perceive hurts in our lives.

I'll never forget a young girl that was a camper at a kid's camp that I worked at when I was 17. She was 15 and always, and I mean always, wore her sunglasses; inside, outside, sunny, cloudy, daytime or night it really didn't matter. At first blush you assumed she was desperately trying to maintain a aura of cool but after more conversation the true story came out. When she was little she had an uncle that consistently told her that her eyes didn't match the rest of her face. Eventually the dent started to hold water and she developed a rather intelligent way to compensate. In reality (or at least my reality and others at camp) she was a beautiful young girl with lovely eyes.

To try to put some lipstick and rouge on this pig, the good news is that the dents don't have to be a life-dictating force. We can always figure them out, which is really, really important especially if you parent small lives since our hammers can leave the biggest marks. Hmmmm, it's either end awkwardly here or keep on rambling. Let's leave it for another post.

80 somewhere but not here.

So we bought a house and are doing extensive renovations. Good angst can be expelled by smashing out a kitchen and putting your foot through drywall. Give it a shot sometime, reno or no reno. I'm in the bathroom today tearing out drywall and I'm on a two-step ladder reaching with my knife to score the drywall to limit where it breaks off when I have a keen recollection.

About 7 years ago we did renovations to our existing bathroom. My Dad was helping me put in fresh drywall on the ceiling. If you've ever placed drywall into a ceiling before, you know it's about as much fun as chewing tinfoil: it's gotta happen but you can't wait for the credits. So I'm on a stacking stool and my Dad is on a two-step ladder. We bring a piece of drywall up that is almost a full 4x8 sheet towards the ceiling. The plan was simple, brilliant and straight-forward. We put the piece up on the ceiling, position it and I would hold it up by myself while Dad put 2 or 3 screws in just to keep it from crashing. The drywall goes up and gets into position. That was the last successful part of the plan. Dad places a screw on the drill and starts to put it into the drywall. Misses the ceiling joist. Puts another screw on the drill. Misses the joist to the opposite side. At this point my muscles are experiencing serious acid build up. I work with people all day. My hobbies include fishing and playing guitar. I have a limited muscle mass. It's true now and it was certainly true then. Dad tries to take the screw out of the drywall. "Dad, just leave it. Try again", I plead. He places another screw on the drill and this one falls off just as he gets it to the face of the drywall. My arms are doing the shakes. Badly. "Hurry Dad. Hurry up. Hurry, hurry." I can still see him moving in almost slow motion to get another screw. 45 minutes later he finds one and puts it on the drill. This one goes into the drywall and into solid wood! But wait. Dad has screwed it too far and has broken the paper which completely takes all the strength away. At this point I have to reposition myself and I slip a little. Dad tries to catch the drywall and in doing so repositions the leg of his ladder over a hole in the floor. He goes sideways which causes his body to hit my stool which sends me flying like I'm ducking for cover in a gunfight. When all is said and done, Dad and I are on the floor, the drywall is in two pieces and the stacking stool has two legs going the opposite way they were designed to. I let out a couple expletives and just shake my head at the whole debacle.

It was Dad's birthday yesterday. He should have turned 80 except he passed away in May 2003 of a massive heart attack. He literally died in the middle of saying sentence.

Dad and I were not really very close, but I loved the guy and I know he loved me. I miss him. And when I stood on that ladder today in that half gutted bathroom I couldn't help but think of the old guy and I really missed him. He would be driving me absolutely nuts with this renovation and I would be coming home from working at the house complaining like crazy about him. Wouldn't that be a treat...

Away in a Manger

Every night at bed time at our house is a slice of Christmas. That's because I get to sing "Away in a Manger" as a bed time song to my 4 year old daughter, Grace. Ever since it made it's appearance in December last year it has been a fan favorite. It matters not to her that it's traditionally a Christmas song. For her it's like a comfy stuffy.

Two nights ago I was tucking her in bed and she was having a hard time. Grace cries buckets of tears when she weeps and this is often the end result of being very tired. As I pulled up the blanket to her chin she asked me the very familiar question, "Can you sing (sob, sob) Away in a Manger?" As I brushed away over sized drops from her cheek I of course agreed and began the nightly ritual. She stopped crying as she heard the first of three verses and when the last note was off my lips she gently said, "Goodnight Dad" and she was off, putting another day behind her.

I paused on the bed and wondered, how long will this work before a tired childrens Christmas song won't work? When will it no longer be enough to quiet the tears and usher her into a peaceful sleep? When will I not be enough to keep her safe and to chase away the scary moments and the moments that hurt so bad? I couldn't help but feel incredibly helpless and vulnerable. I'm not really into keeping my kids in a bubble, but the older they get the more safe it seems. With every hint that Olivia brings home from school about a school friend not including her I wonder if maybe isolating them completely wouldn't be so bad? Of course that's impossible and if not impossible then seriously irresponsible. The terrible beauty of life is that we're supposed to love and love hard with as few restrictions as possible. And that's where the cruel joke of love comes in: the more you love the more you lose. Sure the gains are marvelous, but eventually the returns on the investment are called in. To isolate yourself from others so that you don't love is safe, and in likely the most sane thing you can do. Teaching my kids to love with abandonment is only setting themselves up for heart ache. And there are times when heart ache seems to be it's own calling in life.

But where would I be without choosing to love? I certainly wouldn't find myself on the bottom portion of a bunk bed singing Away in a Manger when it's 30 degrees outside. What a shame that would be. Love is a double edged sword and there are times when that handle will turn into the blade and leave a mark, like it or not.

More later...

Melancholy

I've slowly been learning to come to grips with a cold, hard, beautiful fact of my life: I am a melancholy person and I currently am experiencing this truth. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy life and I believe I laugh quickly and with gusto and enjoy seeing others do the same. But it doesn't take very long for me to get to a place where I feel more deeply and feel like my guts are sloshing around in the basement of a sad house.

Life is beautiful, so incredibly beautiful. I watch my kids and I listen to them tell stories and say ridiculous things ("God is so powerful that he can carry giant lawn chairs." What?!?). I am able to sit on a lake and fish and watch my world. I enjoy relax in the evening with my wife and we figure out exactly how to save the world. Typically this occurs right around 11:00 at night. We call it 11 o'clock genius.

But life is incredibly tragic and seems to be more so for some than others. I could list off a small book of people I know who are fighting cancer at this very moment. These people all have family and loved ones who are hoping and praying that everything goes very well but who all know the possibilities on the other side of the coin. I just read an article on CNN about police finding a women who spent the last 17 years living in a shed. She was abducted by a couple when she was eleven years old and was concealed in a shed while having two children who were fathered by her captor. The kids are now 15 and 11 and were raised in a shed. "They are all in good health," Kollar said in response to a question about how Dugard and her children are doing. "But living in a backyard for the last 18 years does take its toll." Go figure.

These are just a few of the things that reinforce my melancholy self. Life is beautiful, but life is also incredibly brief (even if you live for your 80 years) and unpredictable. I wear that sentiment on my leg partly because I enjoy brilliant, inspirational art and partly to remind myself on a lazy Sunday afternoon to take my kids to the park and be ridiculous even when I would love to just be lazy. The blossoms are falling from the tree and we never really know when they're done.

So, I'm going to go to a party to celebrate my niece's upcoming wedding tonight. We're going to laugh, enjoy each others company, have good food and drink and hope for a wonderful future for them. Sometimes hope can be a rare commodity but I'll do my best to revel in it and stoke it's flame so we can all keep warm.