Category: FAMILY

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The Journey

“There is meaning in every journey that is unknown to the traveller” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Three years ago my father, brother, and I lived these words as we drove to Canada. Our purpose was to visit a family friend who lay dying. But there was another purpose hidden in that trip, of which we knew nothing at the time.

Driving through the bleak landscape of upstate New York our conversation turned to matters of the heart. The solemnity of our purpose drew out discussion about death, life, love, faith. The three of us shared openly at the inmost level. It was cathartic and deeply bonding. And though we could not know it at the time, that conversation became a touchstone throughout my own father’s decline and death earlier this year.

It had been years since I was in my hometown. I took the wrong exit. This took us past our old church. We stopped in on a whim and slipped into the back to join the evening service. Each of us was filled with grace in that moment.  Though unspoken at the time, we each knew we were on holy ground. We were somehow meant to be there, together as a family, and together for our dying friend.

We saw her the next morning. She lay in bed in her living room, sun beaming through the window, surrounded by family. Our time together was filled with tears and laughter, as it should be. We wept with joy recalling the times beyond number of outrageous fun. We wept knowing this was the last time we would all be together in this life. Once again the conversation moved gracefully to matters of the heart. As a result my brother and I quickly drew close with the family daughters, whom we had known well as children but had not seen in many long years.

This January, during my dad’s memorial service in Canada, this very same family–these same daughters–provided the anchor for my brother and me. Who else could so closely identify with our grief? And who could ever have foreseen this at the time? “Life is lived forwards, but is only understood looking backwards”-Søren Kierkegaard.

Marian in Spring

Beams of light bend through the trees

The beauty brings me to my knees

Golden peace cascading to the ground

Silence all around, and simple stillness save

The bending ferns and flowers bowing down

Spring begins her overflow

The season’s graceful undertow

Drawing life from every dormant bloom

You sail on her tide, as sparkling laughter flows

Encircling hearts to yours throughout the room

Marian our dearest friend

Your life a gift that never ends

By the Living Springtime you embraced

You in dappled light, the Maker’s heart, and ours

The sweetest springtime garland interlaced

This post is dedicated to our late friend who passed away three years ago this week, to her dear family, and to my own dad this Father’s Day – my first without him.

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My Sister

My sister’s life lies somewhere between inspiration and calamity. She is the bravest person I know. But she also has life skills that lead her to exclaim that her life is “mostly a warning for others”.

My sister makes principled decisions anchored in what will be most meaningful for her and for others. She then lives the hard consequences with courage. She gave up a surefire job after college to work as an unpaid intern at a museum. There she made critical contributions to a new display on race relations. To make ends meet she lived in my aunt’s basement and waited tables. Out of conviction, she then left the comfort of her familiar life to move to a new city where she endured a soul-withering job, but found her soulmate. She recently left a top-tier college for a new post at a small Midwestern school. She believes in their cause and in her ability to make a difference there. She is an inspiration….

….and a warning. Take her recent trip to China. On her very first day in Beijing she became separated from her tour group. Soon hopelessly lost within the labyrinth of the “Forbidden City”, she was obliged to show someone a card that the tour company had given her. Written on the card in Cantonese was something to the effect of: I have lost my tour group. Please call my tour company at…. A panicked guide soon appeared for her. Life Skills – 0.

Next was a boat trip up the Yangtze River. Onboard she shared a cabin with her travelling companion. It had a small balcony off the side of the boat. One evening my sister prepared to go up on deck for dinner. She shut off the cabin lights. She closed and locked the balcony door and the cabin door. Seated alone at her dining table, my sister became increasingly annoyed that her roommate was taking so long to join her. Finally she began to eat on her own. Sometime later her roommate appeared, none too pleased. For quite some time she had been locked out on the balcony. She had since been pounding on the balcony door and yelling for help. She was finally rescued by someone in the adjoining room. Life Skills – 0: Calamity – 1.

Near the end of the trip it came time to buy gifts for the family back home. My sister discovered that to do so in a local Chinese shop, one had to barter. She does not like to barter. So instead, she returned to Philadelphia and went straight to the shops in Chinatown. There she bought all sorts of Chinese knick knacks for our family. No bartering, and we were none the wiser. Besides, she reckoned all the stuff came from the same place anyways. Life Skills – 1.

[If you know others who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

Image found at funnysigns.net

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Leftovers

“You ate the damn bunny?”

With these sweet, affirming words my wife greeted me this past Easter morning. How was I to know that particular, tasty little chocolate bunny was earmarked for one of our kids? There wasn’t a label on it. And for the record, it was totally worth it.

My wife was not pleased. She seldom is on days when I forage like a roving bear through our fridge, pantry, and shelves. This describes my behavior on most days.

I developed this bad habit as a child. My parents were late morning sleepers. My sister and I were early morning risers. So my parents began to leave out breakfast cereal, two bowls, and two spoons. Their message was clear: kids help themselves and leave mom and dad alone for another hour of sleep.

Soon tiring of mere breakfast self-service, my sister and I began to forage further afield. If we put a chair on top of the counter we could reach the jar with the chocolate chips. If we stuck a hairpin in the lock on the pantry we could access nuts, syrup, coconut, and other delicacies. Sweet dreams mom and dad, we can take it from here.

It turns out the bad habit of foraging is rather widely shared by others. In college, my brother taped a sign to their refrigerator aimed at his roommates: “Opening and closing the fridge door will not magically make food appear”. Another friend describes his own foraging habit by simply stating, “Chuck: I can work a fridge”. I have seen this. He speaks the truth. He is a one man swarm of locust on the leftovers.

And leftovers are the foraging focal point of my marital tension. After a good meal my wife and I fill the Tupperware with leftovers and put them in the fridge. In my wife’s mind, this will be her lunch for tomorrow. In my mind, this will be my snack in about 30 minutes. As noted previously, if there is no label on it, it’s fair game. She does not agree. We are taking this issue to arbitration.

This morning I “accidentally” ate my wife’s leftover lunch that she was taking to work. She was understandably upset. So I made it up to her by slipping a leftover chocolate Easter bunny into her purse on her way out the door. I confess that before doing so, I first nibbled a bit off the butt.

 

[If you know others who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

{Image Credit: Card Karma on Flickr}

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Saint Patrick’s Day

Saint Patrick’s Day was the high holy day of holiday shenanigans in our house growing up. Sure, Christmas and Easter were the main event. But no day was more treasured for sheer silliness.

And there were competitors. Take Robbie Burns night, the holiday where Scots honour their great poet. On this solemn eve, my dad dimmed the lights and lit black votive candles on the dining room table. He then “piped in the haggis”, on a kazoo. The “haggis” being a balloon he pulled from the refrigerator filled with frozen jello and bits of fruit. He stood with carving knife in hand, speaking in a faux brogue, then “opened the haggis”. We kids were traumatized. Mom swooned in admiration.

On Saint Patrick’s Day things got even sillier. Green everything. Irish drinking songs blaring on the stereo from dawn until dusk. My parents dancing jigs in the kitchen while waiting for their coffee to percolate. Beef stew with Guinness. Oat cakes. Once again, we kids were traumatized.

Except my little brother.  He would dress himself in green and pretend to be a leprechaun. He would flit around the house trying not to be seen. When we spied him hiding under a table he would waddle off at speed to another room, giggling all the way. He cut up pieces of aluminum foil to make “gold coins” which he slipped under people’s doors and left on chairs. It was very cute. And kind of weird.

One Saint Patrick’s Day, when he was perhaps 6, he outdid himself. My parents were at the kitchen table. In walked my brother with dad’s prized bottle of single malt whisky, a surefire Irish tradition. Except the whisky had been turned electric, neon green. In honor of Saint Patrick, My brother had dumped an entire bottle of green food coloring into my dad’s prized whisky. To be a good sport, dad drank a bit. His lips turned green. I suspect it may also have discolored his urine.

My father kept the ruined bottle of whisky. He would serve it to guests in dark whisky glasses, then say nothing as their lips turned green. He only did this to guests with a good sense of humor. Or so I believe. Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

Image Credit: Freaking News

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KA-BOOM

The fireball engulfed my arm before igniting the fuel canister in my hand. Fearing an explosion, I hurled the burning can into the empty field beside our campsite.

Moments before I had been re-filling the fuel reservoir in our camp stove. The stove was not completely off. A tiny blue flame lingered around the burner. I did not see it. I was a teenager. It is not the most observant period in one’s life.

As I began to pour the fuel, the tiny ring of fire ignited the vapour from the can. I jerked my arm back, splashing cooking fuel up my arm and all over the fuel canister itself. Both objects caught on fire. I hurled the can as far as I could, then tamped out my arm. Thankfully it was just singed. To my surprise the canister did not explode. It merely burbled and melted until it was half destroyed.

Our family collected itself after all the excitement. I was tasked with getting rid of the remaining fuel in and the half-melted canister lying the field. I took the well-worn teenage path of least resistance. I dumped the remaining fuel down the outhouse beside the campsite, then threw the remains of the empty container in the trash.

For some reason unknown to me to this day, I glanced down the hole of the outhouse into which I had just dumped the fuel. An oil slick of cooking gas was forming on top of the cesspool. It was quite distinct, shimmering unmistakably in the depths.

I got my dad. He looked down the outhouse. Then he looked at me.  Then he did something I had never seen him do before, or since. He acted quickly.

“Let’s go”, he said, trotting back to the campsite with speed. “Time to pack ‘er up and get on the road”.

Haste and decisiveness were totally foreign to my parents. We normally didn’t get on the road until early afternoon. But on this day we packed up camp and hit the road in 20 record-breaking minutes.

I did not fully grasp the situation. I asked dad what all the rush was about as we sped away from the park. He began to giggle. Then he began to laugh until he almost could not drive.

“Son”, he said. “I want you to imagine what is going to happen the next time some unsuspecting camper goes into the outhouse. Now imagine they have a newspaper and a cigarette. Now imagine what they do with that cigarette once they’re done smoking. Now image what happens next….”

The life lesson dad taught me that day was to speed when fleeing from responsibility.

[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

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Cat Pee

My wife found me in the morning, lying across the threshold of our open front door. I was asleep in a pool of my own drool. In my hand was a half-eaten raw potato.

For weeks a foul stench had come through the wall separating our half of the duplex from that of our neighbour. The smell was so bad it made our eyes water. The only way to keep it at bay was to open all our windows, even though this was Canada in early spring. Brrrrrrrr.

The source of the smell was our neighbour’s cats. Or more precisely, their “leavings”. Multiple cats had been using the neighbour’s half of the duplex as a litter box for years. Their apartment was saturated with cat urine and faeces, of which we were now the olfactory beneficiaries.

We spoke about it with our neighbours on several occasions. They responded by putting bleach on their basement floor. This merely changed the nature of the stench from “cat pee” to “World War I trench cat pee”.

My dad came to visit. He had bad allergies. The stench was so overpowering he had to go stay in a hotel. That night, in addition to the windows, we opened the front door to get maximum ventilation. We lived in a sketchy neighbourhood (see this post). So for security reasons I rolled out my sleeping bag and slept in the threshold of the open front door.

I woke in the night to the sound of a small tinkling bell. I roused myself. There, on our kitchen table, was one of the offending cats grooming themselves in a most unseemly manner. I snapped.

In sleep-deprived derangement I stumbled into our kitchen, seeking a projectile to drive the cat from our home. My eyes landed on a raw potato. I went back into our dining area and reared back to drill this cat with a potato. But even in my fuzzy state, something in my brain told me that at this close range I might actually kill the cat. Besides, the cat was innocent: by rights I should be throwing the potato at my neighbour. So I bit the raw potato into pieces and hurled a tiny fragment at the cat.

Of course I missed, splattering potato on the wall. But the cat got the message and ran. I stumbled back to my sleeping bag, clutching the remainder of the potato lest I need it later. That’s how my wife found me in the morning.

After all diplomacy was exhausted we called social services, because our neighbours actually had a new baby living in that cesspool. We broke our lease. Later the health department condemned the entire building.

Months afterwards I was cycling home from work. My route led past the old apartment. I was stopped in my tracks by a familiar stench. There, on the front lawn of the duplex, was a dumpster full of sodden floorboards. Apparently they had been so saturated with cat urine the building owner was forced to strip the neighbour’s apartment back to the studs.

[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

[Image credit to imgflip]

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My Wife is Always Right

Led down an alley in Morocco by a stranger, far from other tourists. Any idiot could sense that perhaps we were in danger. Except this idiot.

We had earlier been approached by a suspicious looking character in the tangled web of small streets in Marrakech. He offered to take us to a nearby Berber leather market. Of course we said no. Any idiot knows not to follow a stranger offering directions in Marrakech. Even this idiot.

But the leather market did sound pretty cool.

Sometime later a friendly Moroccan in line with us at a shop asked where we were from. As we chatted, he casually mentioned the Berber leather market as something worth seeing. He paid for his items, wished us well and headed off. No weird vibes from this guy. He hadn’t offered to take us anywhere.

Independent corroboration that the market existed. Now we were really interested.

After we walked some distance in search of the market, we happened upon the friendly guy standing outside a shop with several friends. He said hello and asked how things were going. No mention of the Berber market. It was I who said that we were trying to find it. The man then said something to one of the friends who was about to leave the shop. He turned to us and said, “Ahmed here works near the market. He is heading that way now. He can show you the way if you want”. He did not push. It was up to us.

I enthusiastically agreed. We all wanted to see the market. This gift of a guide was our way to do it. But my wife’s radar went off at the offer. She wasn’t so sure. Naturally I became annoyed – we needed help to find the market, and we had clearly avoided the earlier scam. Time to live a little.

Ignoring her protests, we began to follow the man through the impossible web of tangled alleys. Each was filled with tiny shops selling all manner of goods and with smells from open air butcher shops, the sweat of donkeys, sewage, spices. It was exhilarating and overwhelming. We soon left the tourist district behind us.

Now the children joined my wife in protest. Too much walking. But just then we began to see signs for the tannery and leather district of Marrakech. The smell became overwhelming as we passed courtyards filled with leather hides being stretched in the sun. We MUST be almost at the market!

We rounded a corner and came upon a tacky tourist shop called “Berber Leather Market”. Several intimidatingly large men stood outside. It was immediately obvious, even to this idiot, that (a) we had been scammed and (b) we were someplace we ought not to be. We beat a hasty retreat to the safety of the main road, without further incident.

As we trudged back to the tourist district, I was a mix of contrition and annoyance. Both aimed squarely at myself. I apologized to the family. I moped. I placated the children with chocolate. Then I promised my wife that I would write a blog about how she is always right and how I should always listen to her. What kind of idiot makes such a promise?

PS: It turns out the Marrakech leather district scam is well known to those who read tourist blogs.

[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

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Birthday Girl

A bolt of electricity went through me the first time I held her. I didn’t know it was possible to love anyone so much. Then I saw my wife’s open abdomen from the c-section and I nearly fainted.

Her difficult arrival did come with some levity.  During the labor, a nurse asked my wife if she would like to have a mirror wheeled into the delivery room.

“Why would she want a mirror?” I asked naïvely.

“Some mothers want to witness the miracle of birth”, the nurse replied.

At this point, mid-contraction, my wife sat up and hissed “Listen! If God wanted me to see that miracle He would have put my head on my butt!” So many reasons to love my wife.

I have clear memories of calling my parents with the watershed news. This was our first child, and the first of a new generation for the entire family.

Our daughter spent her first four years in Africa. She learned to be flexible. Passed around the market by delighted African mothers? No problem. Carried into the kitchen to be spoiled by African restaurant staff? No problem. Hippo pooping just outside her front door on safari? No problem.

She became resilient in our move from Africa to Belgium. Overnight she went from being outside every day, speaking English, and running with a pack of African children to being indoors, hearing French, and being alone. She would collect rocks on our various outings and pile them by the door. I asked her about it and she said, “Oh dad, these are my friends”. Thankfully, once she made some real friends, the pile reverted to being mere rocks.

Her heart is tender and open. During our years in Washington, DC she became the steady guidance system for her ballistic younger brother and his friends. She loved being close to our extended family, and being friends with people of all stripes and differences.  She enjoys horses, but thankfully she never became a weird horsey girl. Mostly, I think she liked the overnight stay at her aunt’s house beside the horse farm.

Our move to Switzerland has been the hardest for her. But it has propelled her towards adventure and independence. And it has revealed deep courage in her character. In the recent week leading up to her beloved grandfather’s death, she sat at his bedside for long periods just holding his hand. As I watched her do so I asked myself once again: how is it possible to love anyone so much?

[This story is for our daughter on her 17th birthday. Love you, birthday girl.]

[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

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The Iguana

[I would like to thank the many people who have reached out to me in response to last week’s post about dad’s death. Your support has been overwhelming and uplifting. I am deeply grateful.]

After the recent death of my father, I have now turned to the task of “taming the iguana” – dad’s own term for the hundreds of random sticky notes, files, and mislabelled boxes that fill his home. Doing so has uncorked both laughter and tears, as well it should. These two emotions often arrive together.

Facing the iguana is like living in a scene from “A Beautiful Mind”: number of yellow sticky pads strewn randomly about dad’s house–114; number of yellow sticky pads containing useful information–7.  Almost every box is simply labelled “mementos”. Thanks dad.

I have yet to locate an original copy of dad’s will. But I have found three boxes of interstate roadmaps from the 1970s. I also came across water bills from 1992. They were in a box labelled “mementos”.

There are two bedroom closets upstairs. One contains just two pieces of clothing: my mother’s wedding dress and dad’s old boy scout uniform. The other contains dad’s extensive collection of flannel pajama pants and nerdy t-shirts.  My favourite is one that says “Technically, Moses was the first person to download data from the cloud to a tablet”. I once gave him a shirt from the CERN particle accelerator that says “I think your Boson is giving me a Hadron”. But I can’t find the shirt. I think dad must have discarded it for fear of appearing rude.  I have no such scruples.

Dad supported dozens of charities. His desk is piled high with aid appeals from dozens more that he had not yet gotten round to supporting but that he did not have the heart to turn down.

I smile each time I encounter dad’s two prized refrigerator magnets (which is often). One says:

o   “To Do is to Be” – Nietzsche

o   “To Be is to Do” – Kant

o   “Do Be Do Be Do” – Sinatra

The other magnet simply states: “Without ice cream, there would be darkness and chaos”.

It is the photographs that most elicit laughter and tears. Each one is a physical reminder of dad with my mother, with grandkids, family, and beloved friends. This is also true of the photos we have received in recent weeks from friends and family. Like the one enclosed. When my son’s best friend heard of the death, he commemorated dad on his basketball shoes.

The Irish have a term, “thin place”. It is where this world and the next one are barely indistinguishable, like the wardrobe in Narnia. The hospital room during dad’s final moments was a “thin place”. If you reached out there you could almost push through into where dad was going. In recent weeks, Dad’s house has become a “thin place”, thanks to the iguana.

 

[If you know someone else who might enjoy a lighthearted story to begin their week, kindly forward them WordsfortheWeary. The more the merrier.]

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Dad

My dad died peacefully last week. I miss him terribly. His death, and indeed his entire life, is a powerful testament to the Words for the Weary spirit of “lighthearted stories about everyday things”.

Two weeks ago we arrived at his home to find him in an armchair. He was connected to oxygen and wearing slippers shaped like hamburgers. He cheerily engaged with everyone while consuming vast amounts of ice cream. His faith and humor and grace remained intact despite the cancer. This was no stoic façade: it’s how dad was hardwired from a lifetime of love.

On one occasion during the ensuing days, as I reconnected his oxygen, he took a deep breath and said “Ah, oxygen. Great stuff. They should put more of it in the air…”.

After moving to narcotic pain medication he quipped “My first drug trip. So this is what all the fuss was about in the 1970s. I suppose I must be hip now with the younger generation.”

We returned one night from the hospital to find a neighbor’s note: “Tater-tot hot dish in the refrigerator”.  I love Midwestern neighbors. And I love tater-tots.

Dad was never strong on administration. His account passwords are kept on little yellow sticky notes that absolutely cover his desk. Each note contains a complex mathematical formula which, when solved, reveals a password. I asked him how I was ever to sort out his affairs. He smiled and suggested that if I took a step back and looked at the sticky notes with the correct perspective, they were artfully arranged in the shape of an iguana. Thanks dad.

We prayed together. When speech left him, we prayed for him. Or we simply held hands and gazed upon one another with such love that words were not required.

His decline was remarkably fast – a week before he died he was playing the piano. His final days and the moments of his death were profound. You could squeegee the love out of the air, it was so saturated with grace and light.  He died surrounded by his closest loved ones, utterly at peace with his life and with God.

He was the greatest man I have ever known. He also happened to be my dad. No amount of thanks seems sufficient for such a gift.

[This post is dedicated to my late father. His obituary, written by my sister late one night in just a few minutes, can be found here]