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When Impossible Boys Grow Up to be Unbreakable Men

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This is a tale of my three sons. The youngest is only four months old and his personality is emerging, the way those old Polaroid photos leeched up through the blackness. My oldest son is eleven and exactly like I was as a child: a rule-follower, not a risk-taker. He’s kind to his siblings and isn’t particularly rough. He loves to read.

My middle son Sam, well, sometimes I wonder where he came from. He’s a climber, adventurous, and never gives up. He will ask for something over and over and over again, even if I say no. His primary way of relating with people is by being physically rough with them: he has a game he plays with his grandpa whenever he sees him that involves punching him in the stomach as hard as he can. He finds this hilarious. If I am ever on my knees changing the baby’s diaper or picking something up off the floor, no matter where Sam is in the house, he will sense that I’m on my knees, find me, and jump on to my back. He spent all Thanksgiving weekend wrestling with his cousin.

He is five. Words that describe him perfectly at this point in his life? I’ll take Defiant, Strong-Willed, and Passionate.

* * * * *

Maile was recently reading an interview with Laura Hillenbrand, the author of Unbroken. It’s been on the NYT best-seller list for 180 weeks, and it’s the story of a man who served in WWII, survived a plane crash, being lost at sea, and then imprisoned in a Japanese POW camp.

There was a quote from the interview that stood out to me as she reflected on the subject of her book, a man named Louie.

“Defiance defines Louie,” Laura Hillenbrand said. “As a boy he was a hellraiser. He refused to be corralled. When someone pushed him he pushed back. That made him an impossible kid but an unbreakable man.”

An impossible kid.

An unbreakable man.

Sometimes I think I am way too short-sighted when it comes to raising Sammy. Too many times I want to change his personality NOW because it will make my life easier. But I think that, with him, with all of my children, I need to think about how these current struggles will someday become incredible strengths of character. I don’t want to break him now just so that bedtime routines or dinner times are quieter. I don’t want to quench his spirit just so that I can walk through the house without getting jumped on.

I want to guide him into becoming an unbreakable man.

* * * * *

Sam catches up to me as I start down the stairs.

“Dad, can you sing me a bedtime song?”

“Sammy, everyone else is asleep. If we go back in there and I sing, we’ll wake them up.”

He looks up at me.

“C’mon, Dad,” he says.

“It’s not going to happen, buddy.”

“C’mon, Dad,” he says again.

Did I mention he does not give up?

“Come here,” I say, and I sit down on the floor in the hallway, my back against the wall. He comes over and sits on my lap, facing me. He wraps his arms around my neck, puts his head on my chest, and sucks his thumb while I sing his favorite song.

After getting through it twice, I whisper into his ear.

“Time for bed, little man.”

He looks at me and smiles, then walks back into the bedroom. Sometimes he seems like an impossible kid, but from now on I will choose to remember that this will someday make him into an unbreakable man.

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Going to Church, Betraying My Ancestors, and Encountering the Holy

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My family has lived in eastern Pennsylvania for the last ten generations. Nearly 250 years. My wife is always shaking her head because no matter where we go it seems we meet someone who is a great-aunt, friend of my grandparents, or third-cousin once removed.

“So how do you know that person?” she asks after they walk away.

“You know so-and-so?” I ask. She nods. “That’s so-and-so’s brother’s mom’s sister. Remember that family?”

“Oh, yes,” she says in a deadpan voice. “How could I have forgotten.”

It’s a unique place, but it is also a place that gives me a strong sense of who I am, a deep sense of belonging.

* * * * *

For the last five months or so we’ve attended St. James Episcopal church on the corner of Orange and Duke Street in downtown Lancaster. We started going there because after we moved into the city some friends invited us, and then we kept going there because it’s within walking distance, they have a wonderful children’s program, and there’s something about these old traditions that feels like a balm to my over-stimulated, until-now-Evangelical-church-attending soul.

We also like the fact that anyone seeking God can take communion, and just this past week a woman gave the sermon and led the service. In my opinion, both of these are sorely lacking in the Evangelical community in our county.

But what I really love is the quiet. The stillness. There are moments of silence, for one thing, times when everyone just stops and waits. During the prayers. Just after the sermon. There’s something powerful about the liturgy, about asking for forgiveness every week, about reaffirming what I believe. There’s something wonderful, groundbreaking even, about taking communion as a family every single week, of watching Cade and Lucy reverently take the wafer and dip it into the wine.

“The Body of Christ.”

“The Blood of Christ.”

I walk back the side aisle, the taste of wine still lingering, and I am impacted again with the depth of this death, the completeness of this resurrection.

* * * * *

My ancestors would probably have serious issues with me attending an Episcopal church. After all, it was the high church Protestants of their day who were chasing them around the countryside, demanding that they either baptize their infants or burn at the stake. As is heartbreakingly common throughout the church’s history, this policy had more to do with politics, money, and control than any sincerely held religious beliefs, but there you have it. Anabaptists were dismembered, burned at the stake, hung…you get the picture.

Now I take communion within a tradition and a way of doing church very similar to the one that hunted down my ancestors.

I think, I hope, that they would understand that the main reason we go to St. James is that we find Christ there. The leadership gives us the space we need during the service to encounter Jesus, to reflect on our week, our weaknesses. Each time our family crowds into one of those box pews, it is a reaffirmation of this path we have chosen.

Eternal God and Father,
by whose power we are created and by whose love we are redeemed:
guide and strengthen us by your Spirit,
that we may give ourselves to your service,
and live this day in love to one another and to you;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen.

* * * * *

It’s been cold these last few weeks when we walk to church. The kids get bundled up in their coats and wool hats and I walk down with the older four while Maile feeds Leo at the house – the two of them come down later, Leo strapped into a baby carrier, Maile using him for his warmth. I leave the kids at the chapel where they have choir for a half hour, and I walk down to Square One Coffee to get something warm to drink. Sometimes Miguel, the guy with all the keys, will ask me to carry empty coffee pots down with me, and I happily oblige.

There is something holy about walking down an early-morning, mostly empty city street on a cold Sunday, your breath bursting from your lungs as you head towards church. There’s something weighty about entering a hundreds-year-old church just as the adult choir is finishing their morning practice, their voices ringing through the stained glass.

Thy Kingdom come
Thy Will be done
On Earth as it is in Heaven

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The Homeless Guy Who Didn’t Look Homeless (or, What My Daughter Told Me)

IMG_1175Yesterday I sat beside the bed, holding my daughter’s hand. Maile and I had just gone through a tough conversation with her, one that had to do with growing up and facing some of the things that come with getting older. Most of the time I think we want our kids to grow up too fast, be mature, be responsible, learn to do your own laundry and clean the house, and that’s all fine and good, but yesterday as I sat there with her I realized she is still just a little girl. She often tries to act grown up, and I can see glimpses of the young woman she is becoming, but she is still only nine years old.

Even after we had worked our way through the difficult territory, she still had tears pooling in her eyes. I got up and gave her a hug.

“Honey, what’s really wrong?” I asked her. “I feel like there’s still something bothering you.”

She nodded, and big tears dropped from her cheeks as she looked down for an instant. Then she looked up at Maile and I with a desperate look in her eyes.

“I don’t want to grow up,” she said. “I like our life. I like our family, how it is now. I don’t want to get older.”

* * * * *

ISIS. Ebola. Millions dying every year due to lack of clean water, lack of food, and the presence of preventable diseases like malaria. Wars and rumors of wars. Human trafficking. Addictions.

I think I don’t want to grow up – I want there to be other adults who will handle these things. My parents’ generation perhaps. I want someone else to clean up the messes.

But no matter how hard us GenXers try to deny it, we are growing up. We’re building businesses or having families or finding our place in the world. And in many ways it stinks, you know, growing up. It’s not fun being responsible, trying to change hard things, trying to fight for good. But we’re growing up, and it’s time.

It’s time to realize that if we don’t step up, no one else will.

* * * * *

I walk through this city, my city, and on a particular block, in front of a particular building, there’s always this guy who asks for help.

“C’mon, man,” he asks in a polite voice. “Can’t you help an old homeless guy out?”

There’s something about him that doesn’t look homeless. If he is, he’s fresh on the streets. He’s usually clean, and he looks like someone who would own a pizza place or a jewelry store. But every time I walk down Queen Street, he’s there. The first time, he caught me off guard. He just didn’t look very homeless.

The next time, I saw him from a long way off, but again I didn’t know what to say. What to do.

I think I need to be more prepared. I think I need to buy him a sandwich or something.

* * * * *

I’m not sure how these things are all related. I just know that when my daughter said those words with huge tears in her eyes, I felt like I was looking into my own eyes. I felt like it was me saying those words.

“I don’t want to grow up…I don’t want to get older.”

But it’s time, you know? It’s time to grow up.

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When the Writing Doesn’t Come

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The writing comes in fits and starts during these latter days of the year. The sky is gray and the leaves on the sycamore tree have almost flown away for the winter. Its bare branches scrape against the cold gutters on the third floor of the house, and spring feels very, very far away. Men work in the alley behind our house, refilling a massive hole they dug not too many months ago, and isn’t that how life feels much of the time? Like an endless digging and filling of holes?

What are we searching for, really, in all of this excavating?

I play the music that reminds me of college – in those long, winter nights, in that campus in the woods, I could hibernate, and hibernate I did. There were weekends when I barely woke up. Long, leafless Saturdays when I slept until dinner time, then walked around campus alone in the dark, the melancholy heavy.

But in this current iteration of life, with a wife and five children, there is no sleeping until dinner, and very little time for walking hand-in-hand with melancholy. I am snapped away (thankfully) from such indulgences by the warm touch of a wife, the drool of a baby, the laughing plea of a child to play monster.

“Just five more minutes?” they ask, and I growl, and they squeal.

There is something restful about winter, when I allow myself to settle into it, when I stop counting down the months til spring, when I let the gray roll over me and I stop trying to surface.

The writing comes in fits and starts during these latter days of the year. Maybe it’s a good time to clean off my desk or rearrange my books. Maybe it’s a good time to let it sputter, go with it when it flares, and let it lie when its dormant.

 

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Every Day As a Writer, I Have To Tell Myself Not to be Afraid

No.fear from Flickr via Wylio
© 2008 Vincepal, Flickr | CC-BY | via Wylio

Every day as a writer, I have to tell myself not to be afraid.

There are plenty of voices in my head trying to convince me to get a real job, one with medical benefits and a regular pay check. There is the voice that tells me nothing I’ve ever written has really been that great, and there’s no chance that anything I write in the future will be anything special either. There’s the voice reminding me of every bad review, every clients’ criticism of a first draft, every rejection.

Today I stared out my window and I thought about fear. What would my life look like if I gave into it? I’d work 9 to 5. I’d watch a lot of television (because watching television is such a great way for me to forget about everything I’m afraid of). I’d encourage my kids to stay inside, to not try anything new, to keep their expectations low.

I’d stare out a lot of windows.

I wouldn’t let anyone read anything that I wrote – I’d stop writing.

I’d never say hello to anyone, for fear they’d think I was stupid, or naive, or ugly, and wouldn’t say hello back to me.

Fear has a way of leading us in a concentric path that grows smaller and smaller until we are so far inside of ourselves that we are nothing more than a small point surrounded by an unfathomable darkness. There is no question of engagement, no question of opening up. And if we follow fear long enough, it will swallow us up.

Ironically, the best response to fear is not to be unafraid. The best response is to embrace it.

Try new things.

Write or paint or draw. Start a new business or make a new friend. Take a walk. Get outside of yourself.

This is how you move through fear – by moving and by expanding your circle of movement.

Every morning as a writer, I have to tell myself not to be afraid, and then I have to do something about it. So I open a new page and I start typing.

My newest confrontation with fear involves starting a Kickstarter campaign to fund a novel I wrote over the last fifteen months. And I have to admit – I’m terrified…that it’s no good, that no one will like it, that people will snicker about me behind their backs. But I know it’s time to stop being afraid.

You’ll be able to support the launch and publication of this novel starting on Monday, October 20th, so stay tuned for more on that.

What are you afraid of?

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These Painful Renovations (Or, Our New Life in the City)

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We are slowly, slowly finding our rhythm here in the city. The mornings are quiet and cool now, and the traffic creeps past on James Street. Our neighbor Paul sits quietly on his porch doing a crossword puzzle, watching people walk by, sometimes taking a nap. To the other side, our neighbors are renovating the old, neglected row house, filling up dumpster after dumpster with plaster and lathe and old counters and rotten floorboards. Broken sinks and chipped tiles. It is a complete emptying so that they can begin new, from the foundation of each room.

Maile schools the kids in the morning and then the afternoons are filled with activities: co-op and art class and Latin. Nearly every evening, we walk the couple hundred yards to the local Y. The kids play, Maile goes to exercise classes, I swim. We walk back through evenings that are increasingly dark, under bright city street lights and past the neighbor two doors down who is giving his front porch a facelift.

I get my hair cut across the street. There’s a tattoo parlor on the corner and an egg roll place across the street. The kids love it when, previously unannounced, we say, “Let’s go to Souvlaki Boys!”, the Greek restaurant on the corner of Queen and James. We walk for ice cream or to the park. My aunt lives a few blocks away, and she walks up to babysit or to join us for dinner.

On Sunday we walk to church, to St. James which is so different from any church we’ve ever gone to. It’s an Episcopal church, so for this boy who grew up in the Evangelical circles, it’s different. But our kids love the children’s program, they love taking communion every week (as do I), and they love the walk. Those Sunday morning walks are quiet. Few cars cruise the streets. Few people sit on their porches, but those who do look up at our passing crowd, seven now, with Sam usually riding on top of the stroller and Cade and Lucy up ahead, chatting.

“Good morning,” we all say.

“Good morning,” they say back to us.

And there is something holy about that, your family passing by a stranger on a quiet Sunday morning in the city, saying hello, and being spoken to.

And it seems to me that even in the midst of this beautiful new routine, there have been hard weeks: when our car was hit-and-run; when I was hospitalized or diagnosed with Crohn’s a few weeks later; when we decided to find a new home for our dog. These things are difficult. But then I hear, through the walls, the renovations going on next door, and I’m reminded that the best transformations always begin with a complete stripping away of the old.

Enlighten the darkness of my heart, I pray along with St. Francis, and a layer of plaster is pulled away. Sunlight shines through the empty space, filtering through the dust. These renovations are painful ones, but the transformation to come will be breathtaking.