One Thing I'd Do Differently

I have just spent what may be my favorite six minutes ever on YouTube. (Considering that this includes countless viewings of a tranquilized bear falling out of a tree onto a trampoline, that is high praise.)  If you have six minutes, please use them to watch and listen to this four-year-old at hockey practice.

As the parents of four sons, Husband and I naturally had a few goals and dreams for our children when they were born. Two teams of doubles partners at Wimbledon? Battery plus first and third for the Royals? Surely a winning World Cup goal from one of them?

Yes. We had athletic goals for our children, in spite of what we fondly call the Parental Lack of Speed Gene (Dominant) that would be prominent in our genome mapping. Also, a Lack of Hand-Eye Coordination (Recessive) passed on by both of us. Also, while we are cutthroat competitors, neither Husband nor I particularly enjoy participatory sports (see also: We Always Lose At Sports). 

Athletic glory from our Boys? It is to laugh. And yet...

Just like every single parent of every single small child in Small Town, we started signing our children up for teams when they were just about the age of the kid in the video today. Boy#1's preschool teacher thought it would be good for his gross motor skills to play soccer ("At this age it's mostly herd-ball, but he'll be running around and that's always good") so we stepped onto the sports merry-go-round when he was four.

It was a full decade of soccer, t-ball, baseball, basketball, tennis--if the ball was round there was one of our Boys on a team for it somewhere. To everything there was a season, and unending schedules and practices and games and orange slices and finding of lost shinguards. One summer we spent every single weeknight of the year at the baseball complex, trading bleachers after the bottom of the fourth inning so that both parents could watch some of each kid's game.

Oh, I have plenty of good memories. I will always remember fondly One picking flowers at mid-pitch and running over to press them into my hand while the ball dribbled past him for a goal. I remember less fondly the year Boy#2 was hit in the side of the face by a fast pitch that knocked off his braces and left him bleeding and slumped over home plate. (As he re-wired Two's mouth the orthodontist reassured us he was actually lucky--without the braces he might have been left without the teeth. Yay? I guess?)

I wonder, though, if our boys might have enjoyed sports more if Husband and I had focused more on having fun and less on competing.

If you watch the YouTube in today's post, you'll see a kid who is having quite a bit of fun, even if his teammates are better skaters. That child is spending a lot of time just sliding around and looking forward to eating at BaDonald's. 

In our defense, after they had tried one season of any sport we never required that the Boys sign up for athletic teams--they could decide to not participate, but if they signed up they had to finish the season. The exception to this was piano lessons, which their mean mother made mandatory through eighth grade. Two continued to take lessons through high school, a third regretted having quit early, and the fourth--well, he plays a mean Solfeggietto, and I regret nothing in this decision.

The Boys have turned out just fine in spite of their genetically doomed competitive athletic careers. All have found health-ifying physical activities they enjoy, and they are avid sports fans. They're vaccinated and insured and know how to read, so we weren't completely awful parents.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that if I were parenting again with what I know today, I would try to be more like the laid-back parent in today's video. He's a hockey coach, for heaven's sake, but he isn't all stressed out about making sure his four-year-old has the best stick skills on the team.

Next time? I would skip the kid sports. BaDonald's anyone?

Saying 'I Love You' During Harvest

During my growing-up years on the farm I knew that June and November were not times to bother my father with trivialities: His mind was filled with harvest. Would the old combine hold together for another year? Is that a storm looming in the west? What are the grain markets doing?

January through April are harvest season for a CPA, months of working long hours to  juggle regular client work with the client appointments that come only once a year.

Husband's work day begins after I leave for my public school accompanying gig, so I only see him for a moment in the morning as I'm going out the door. At the end of the day he dashes home for a quick dinner together then it's back to the office until late, sometimes until the clock has clicked over into the following day. I try not to bother him with trivialities because his mind is filled with tax season: How will the new tax laws affect his clients? Is there a problem with the computer program that's popping up a new dialog box? How can he find enough hours in the day for everything that needs to be done?

These weeks are grueling, and as the wife of a CPA my self-defined role is to be flexible and supportive.

This winter has been the kind of winter we Kansans point to when we talk about our pioneer spirit. It's been mostly warm with  brutal cold snaps and two ice storms last week alone.

Yesterday another winter storm moved in. A frigid wind blew from the east and then it started snowing. Several inches of  heavy, wet snow piled up during the afternoon hours, so instead of coming home for dinner Husband ate downtown and went back to the office.

This morning I had gotten dressed and was looking for my snow boots when I glanced outside. The world was covered in snow, except for the long sidewalks that stretch along two sides of the House on the Corner. Husband had cleared them after he got home at nearly midnight. And at that moment he passed me on the stairs, pulling on his hat and gloves. He had set his alarm early and was already dressed for the outdoors.

"I need your keys--I'll get the car started," he told  me.

Ten minutes later I got into a warm car. The snow and ice had been cleaned off the windows, and the seat warmers were fully engaged.

I wouldn't have asked him to do this, but Husband's pampering reminded me that the language of love isn't always spoken with flowers or words. During harvest the gift of time is the most eloquent love language of all, and my husband is fluent.

The First of the Greatest

Dad (left) and Bill after the war

I don't  remember how often I have posted this picture of my father and his older brother on this site, but I'm quite sure you've seen it at least three times, maybe more. It is my favorite picture of the two of them: They are the shoulder-to-shoulder epitome of the Greatest Generation, and I've written of the anguish my grandmother must have felt as she sent her 17- and 18-year-old sons off to World War II.

Like me, my grandmother had four sons. Three of the four have lived most of their lives within 30 miles of each other, and the fourth was close enough to visit frequently. And nearly every time they got together, they took a picture.

The four brothers often lined up in order of age as someone snapped a shot, so we can watch them age through the decades. Floppy-haired teenagers morph into husbands, fathers, grandfathers, retirees. They are witness to wars, job changes, health scares, successes and failures. Their parents, their wives, their children flow in and out of the pictures, and the brothers look older but still recognizably products of the same gene pool.

Last week, after a few years of failing health and a couple of months of precarious survival, the oldest brother became the first to move out of the frame. Uncle Bill was 93; his surviving brothers are 92, 89, and 87.

My father was one of the speakers at the funeral, and his remarks were some of the most honest I've ever heard in a eulogy. He talked frankly about how and he and his brother, only 19 months apart in age, had personalities that were worlds apart. Even as children they were always competitive and often combative.

"When Dad would say 'Jump!' I would say 'How high?','' Dad told the mourners. "Bill would say 'How come?'"

He told of the memorable day when he could take no more of what he considered Bill's picking on him, and the two ended up in a fight loud enough that it brought both parents running to break them up. Somewhere along the line, though, their relationship changed and grew up and when it was time to choose a branch of the service for enlistment, Dad knew he wanted to be in the Navy--because that was what Bill had chosen.

I thought about those two scrapping boys and their brothers, and once again I channeled Grandma. I don't have to imagine how tired she got of her sons' squabbles; I lived that life. But I've also lived long enough to see our Boys become best friends who have created a brothers-only Facebook page where they share plans and dreams and discuss their aging parents' foibles. I have watched the look on one of my son's face when he sees one of his brothers come into view. Grandma lived to be 97, and she must have felt the same delight when her boys enjoyed each other.

All of those pictures of my father and his brothers. Dozens of them, and now the next picture will have a brother missing.

Last week, though, as we gathered we were grateful for the nine decades during which being together had been important to these men and we knew that their true relationship will continue to exist. They're still brothers, and Bill's still leading the way.

Blow Out the Candles

Yesterday I posted this pictures on my Facebook page. It was snapped 27 years, almost to the second, from the moment the handsome young man on the right blinked for the first time and yelled his disapproval of the bright lights and activity surrounding him. Boy#4 had joined our family.

He'd already had an eventful morning: We arrived at the hospital early to find that sometime between my final prenatal check on Friday and the Monday scheduled induction, this child had decided to flip and was now sitting Buddha-ish with his head right between my ribs. The fact that I did not know that almost 10 pounds of human being had done a complete flip INSIDE MY BODY is a tribute to  his five-year-old, almost-four-year-old, and two-year-old brothers, who had been competing for my attention during that weekend. Also, we had an unexpected house guest, so there was that.

Anyway, my obstetrician happened to be the only person in Big City Hospital who had been trained to perform an external cephalic version which is a fancy way of saying "turning the baby." And because this  pushy-pully maneuver was something the doctors at BCH normally did not attempt, enough extraneous hospital personnel (interns, nurses, aides, other doctors, janitors, etc.) gathered to observe   that Husband remarked we could get a pretty good start on Four's college fund if we charged admission--but this was not at all the blog I planned to write today.

I was going  to write about birthday cakes, and how they've morphed in our family since the frog-themed Dairy Queen cake that marked Boy#1's first birthday. I've made dozens of cakes over the year, maybe as many as a hundred when you count Husband's birthdays.

I would begin planning the cakes weeks in advance--what were the Boy's interests? How could I symbolize those in buttercream? The results weren't Pinterest-worthy but that wasn't a problem because for most of those years Pinterest didn't exist. And they usually turned out whimsical and fun, like this Winnie the Pooh that I freehanded on top of a cake into which love had been added with every ingredient:

Yesterday's celebratory dessert was different. Husband and I took Four out to church and lunch in the Big City to the South where he  lives, then we went back to his apartment where I pulled out a book of matches  and some candles....

...and stuck them into a pie.

Which was purchased. 

By the birthday boy.

As Husband and I sang "Happy Birthday" Four was urging us to double-time the song because "the smoke alarm in here is really sensitive and it's horrible to turn off. Open the windows, quick!"

It occurred to me that all those years ago I would not have believed I would arrive at this point, where the candles and "cake" would be less satisfying than seeing Husband and Four working on his tax return together.

Like birth experiences, birthday traditions don't always turn out the way you think they will. It turns out maybe/probably I was the only one obsessing over those cakes--when I polled the Boys last night, no one could remember which had been the recipient of the Winnie the Pooh cake. (I had to look for photographic evidence. It was Boy#2.)

All those years ago I thought the cake was the centerpiece of the birthday celebration, but it turns out all we needed was a birthday and some family to celebrate with.

Happy birthday, Boy#4. You still take the cake, even when the cake is a pie.