Babysitting

Recently I've caught a glimpse of how hard it is to raise a child. Children don't miss a thing. I'm helping to babysit my neighbor's daughter and most of the time she doesn't listen to me. I know part of it is because I don't put my foot down firm enough, and end up trying to convince her to do things. I'm giving her attention, which she wants, only it's negative attention. I try to speak calmly, minding my pleases and thank yous, but there is just no reasoning with a child. The other day she wanted to paint a flower petal, but then refused to paint it because she didn't think she could paint a good one. When I suggested we do something else, she insisted on painting, yet she wouldn't pick up the brush to paint. I could feel the craziness coming on. When my patience is tried to its last, I can hear my voice getting louder in frustration, and I put on the face. Even the most trivial tasks become commands. "Brush your teeth, now." *cue ferocious look.* And still, still that doesn't work. To hear a child say, "I don't like you" or "this is no fun" or even, "I hate you." Oh my gosh, it's horrible. Can you even imagine your own child saying that to you? It makes me on edge just writing it.

I've also been struck by how often we demand our children do things that we grown ups don't even do consistently (or at least I don't). Things like picking up after yourself, wiping the sink clean, brushing your teeth in the morning, putting your shoes away, etc. We expect our children to do these things, yet the example is not set. The kids are watching y'know, and they hold you to your own standard. How do you speak in love while disciplining someone, which sometimes requires picking up the screaming, kicking child and taking them to wherever they need to be? How do you be sensitive with your words, making sure not to dismiss their feelings when their ultimatums are irrational and purposely testing? As you're asking yourself all these questions in the moment, the child is suddenly okay again, holding your hand and saying sweet words. What the? It's a 180 degree turn around, so fast that I can't wrap my head around it.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

Happy Father's Day

Last Sunday was Father's day and this year I tried to make it special by painting a photograph of my dad, sister, and me. It was taken in 1994 when Dad was stick skinny sporting the way thick glasses, my sister was still developing her fashion sense (plaid on plaid is not so advisable), and I was, as my sister graciously put it when I showed her the photo last week, "such a little dork." My face is familiar but my expression is not. Where did that rambunctious, carefree grin wander off to? Do I ever wear that expression on my face anymore? I hope it's not lost, and if it is, that I can find it again.

My father is flawed, as you and I are flawed, but I have never doubted his love. Has he been harsh in the past? Yes. Incredibly hard to please? Yes. Cruel? Sometimes, seemingly, yes. But in spite of all that, I am reminded of my earliest memory of my father. It's a good one mixed in with some tough love. From my journal:

"I think Dad had a soft spot for me when I was younger. My first really clear memory of him was being held while I was crying. Big gentle hands wiping my tears and holding me and walking in circles around the West Virginia house living room. I think it was dinner time. This memory blurs with another one so I'm not sure if it's part of the same memory or a different one. I'm crying, he's holding me, but then he tells me that I shouldn't cry anymore--to be stronger and that in the future when I do cry, he won't be there to wipe away my tears."

When I was little, that last part confused and upset me. Not there to console me? Did that mean he would stop being Dad? It was his brand of tough love, and sometimes it tasted bitter, but I think he recognized early on that I needed to be less dependent and more willing to stand up on my own. It still rings true. At church on Father's Day, there came a point in the service when we were supposed to greet the people around us. I shook hands with a couple of men, but for one man I decided to wish him a happy father's day, even though there were no children with him. He was an older gentleman with what appeared to be his wife, so I assumed that perhaps he was a father. When I said it, he didn't say thank you. He just kind of looked at me and then sat down. During the sermon the pastor congratulated the fathers, and then said this: "For some of you Father's day is not a happy day. Perhaps you never had a father, or memories of your father are not good ones." The wife of the man turned to her husband eying him, and he tilted his head knowingly. Later in the sermon the pastor shared a statistic that children with the mere presence of a father living in the house were less likely to become juvenile delinquents (or something like that) and again they eyed each other in agreement. It made me sad. Here was obviously not a very happy father's day. I don't know the story, but I recognized their glances of acknowledgment. This statistic had somehow been proven correct in his life. It made me grateful for my own father, and it made me realize that what I thought was cruel isn't really cruel. What's really cruel is being deprived of a father, period. I'm glad that this injustice doesn't have to be a permanent condition, and that Jesus is a comfort for the widow, a shepherd for the lost, a father to the fatherless.

Damp pages in a basement where moth and rust destroy

Our basement has always been a half-hearted mess of decaying boxes and musty air. It is not exactly dusty, but after touching and breathing in that damp space, my fingers feel like they have wiped a chalkboard, a result of the unfinished cement ground leaving a barely detected but always present layer of white powder. In one corner are empty suitcases, some empty, others holding winter clothes in the summer, summer clothes in the winter, and still others are randomly filled with old childhood books. The basement flooded two years ago after a storm, soaking the bottom of unfortunate cardboard boxes lying on the floor, leaving soggy pages and bleeding ink in its wake. The various notebooks and binders were left open to dry, then forgotten about, and continue to lie there, blossoming mold and other curious fungi. Alongside my 1st grade drawn dog is a line of fuzzy mold from the damp.

The other day my dad became fed up with the mess (even though a good part of it is his as well), and the feeble excuse of, "there was a flood! Things are strewn about to dry!" no longer suffices. It has been two years since that floor. No excuses. Laura could never take being down there for long. The dense air triggers her ever reliable gag reflex. But ah, I guess I'm made of tougher stuff. I breathe in those dusty particles like nobody's business. Oh, and the sewage pipe was leaking two days ago onto the ground, so who knows what kind of brown residue is still there...no big deal. So tonight I trudged downstairs and began to sort out the boxes with my name on them.

Some of it is obvious junk-- school work that I'll never look at or use ever again, pages of doodles. Other stuff seems like junk but I keep for nostalgia or pride's sake. Like that A++++ (hah, kidding. Just an A+) on my 3rd grade Heidi book report, or my broken abacus, or the scripty comment on my Call of the Wild essay, "Tiffany, this is very deep." If not for myself, at least I need to show my future kids that I was at the least A) a mathematician ( I'll tell them "I practiced so hard on my abacus that it broke!" aka a flagrant lie), B) An A+ writer, and C) a deep thinking eleven year old. Right? So I keep the book report, the essay, the splintered abacus. And the Japanese picture books I can no longer read nor understand. And the National Geographic for Kids! magazines from 1998-2002. And the stick with the shark on the end that can open and close its mouth, nom nom. So on and so forth. Maybe one day they will become collectibles. Or just collect dust. Who knows? A few dug up items make me cringe, like the middle school gossip notes that unexpectedly drop out of a folder, as well the page full of doodled signatures I created for myself. In retrospect, these only highlight my inflated need for self-importance, but really, has much changed? Yes, but also no. I find the wind chime a friend gave me in middle school that had accompanied a letter apologizing and explaining why she had stopped being my friend. Two of the four chimes fell off within the first couple of days. The only two chimes remaining are the ones on opposite ends. No contact, broken.

The worst items are the miscellaneous ones. The ones that don't fit into KEEP or TRASH or DONATIONS. Things like the leather fanny pack from some obscure conference years ago. I don't want to keep it, yet what stranger would want a fanny pack?!, but throwing it away when I know my parents will probably still use it if given the chance. Like when they go to Europe this fall. Shoot, maybe I should throw it away and save them some outdated embarrassment that they will no doubt be oblivious to. It's still sitting on the shelf.

Now that I've given you a thoroughly useless account of the basement happenings, I'll end with this: In a heap of mostly forgotten items, what will you keep? What will you throw away? Why do you hold on to what you do? I tell myself I'll keep it for myself, for my future family to look at, but maybe, well maybe they won't care. Won't care about how Mommy wrote her alphabet when she was four, or about Fudge from The Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. Nothing. After all, it all does become nothing. "Do not store up for yourself treasures on earth where moth and rust can destroy". I find myself wanting to keep my accomplishments, my "treasures"--the trophies, the A+ paper, the carefully colored fifty states diagram. I want to throw away the college rejection letters, the D's (yes, plural) on my biology, chemistry, physics, algebra, calculus tests (can you tell I'm not a math/science person?). Yet rejection and failure are also a part of who I am because I am imperfect and broken and have too many weaknesses to count. Can I admit them to myself, to my kids, my spouse, my Christ? I have to at some point, so maybe I need to keep some of those D's as evidence in case said imaginary kids and spouse don't believe me (hahaha as if that could happen). Now Jesus I can't fool. Jesus knows all.

My grandpa loves to see things grow. Fruit trees in particular, nice and tall and thick. Oranges, peaches, figs, persimmons, loquats. Cacti too, of the tall and taller variety. Big straight limbs that tower over human height. Notice I didn't say my grandpa loves to 'garden.' He doesn't care much for the overall layout or beauty of the garden. Empty milk cartons line the walkway, loyal soldiers recruiting and collecting rainwater. An empty box that once held a dozen asian pears is turned upside down and used as a stool. He sits hunched over a big metal bowl holding scissors and snipping avocado skins, eggshells, moldy orange peels, into small fragment to deposit into the compost bin. In the spring, he carefully mixes Miracle grow powder with water into plastic cups, and the liquid glows Koolaid blue. Other times he is crouched over, pulling pesky overgrown weeds, and occasionally the momentum of pulling up a difficult weed sends his ninety-four year old body teetering backwards, almost falling. "Stop doing things in the yard," they say. "You could get hurt. You could get hurt."

When my mom went to visit last month, she made it her personal project to eliminate the weeds once and for all. She bought forty bags of mulch to cover the weed laden ground and she and my aunt went to work. Grandpa protested. "Don't do that! If you kill the weeds then I won't have weeds to take out when I go into the garden." The garden is his playground. He picks out the weeds because he doesn't want them, but at the same time they are part of the scene, consistent and reliably there. If the weeds aren't there, it leaves precious little else to do that his body can handle. So I wish they had let his weeds be, and let his playground remain a place of his control. To every one else the garden looks untame and maybe a little sad, but Grandpa is happy with the way it is. He knows its ins and outs, from the glass greenhouse transformed into a storage for mismatched garden gloves and cobwebs, to the tomato plant held upright against a stick with a shoelace. Stop doing things in the yard," they say. "You could get hurt." Is the alternative better? Is it not better to have felt free in a world you understand rather than looking out a window into a garden you love but being afraid that a crack in the pavement will betray you?

My grandpa loves to see things grow, because he is a farmer, not a gardener. He loves to cultivate and sustain life, even as Christ sustains his.