The Apple of His Eye

This is one picture from my parents' wedding day in 1970. The man on the far left is my Grampa, my dad's father. He was in his late 60's on his only son's wedding day, but to me, he looks older. Did people of the Depression era and, perhaps, even earlier age more dramatically? My own dad is over 65, and he doesn't look at his age like his father looked then at the same age. Anyhow, my Grampa had a difficult life from what I know, so perhaps that factored into how he aged. He also smoked like a chimney, so there's that.

My Grampa's wife Helen (my dad's mom and my paternal grandmother) had died a little more than a year earlier, in January 1969. My Grampa had retired from his job to care for her, but they only had a few months together full-time before she died, of complications from a stroke brought on by high blood pressure.

I have long wanted to know more about my paternal grandparents, a desire fed in part by my own dad's longing to understand them more. He readily admits that he had ample time and opportunity to ask them questions, but it did not seem important in the moment. 

I also think that, given what I know of their natures and what I know from much more personal experience and interactions with my maternal grand-parents, talking about one's life wasn't seen as so interesting or non- self-indulgent as it maybe is now. For instance, in the late 1990s, I tried to interview my Mom's mom, my Grammy. I succeeded to a degree, but she would frequently halt mid-memory and ask aloud, "Timmy, why do you want to know about my life? It isn't that interesting." Oh, but it was.

*       *       *

In March 1974, my parents bought their first home. On the day that the deal closed, my Dad raced over to his father's place to tell him, "Dad, you're moving in with us." My grandfather's health was not great, and he was living alone. My Dad has often said that extending this offer to my Grampa was one of the happiest moments of his life, made even more so when my Grampa accepted.  

I soon came along. My bedroom was next to my Grampa's. He kept to himself, didn't talk during meals, instantly lit up a cigarette after finishing dinner, and was content to watch an old black-and-white TV and read the newspaper. 
By the time I was about two years old, my Grampa and I had become friends. I was his little buddy. I'd play under a big wooden desk in his bedroom, which was my parents' ground-floor dining room that they converted into his new bedroom, so he wouldn't have to use the stairs any more. My Grampa often told my parents that I was "the apple of his eye."

About once a week, my Grampa would hand my Dad or Mom some money as they left to go shopping. He started a habit of asking them to buy me a Little Golden Book, which he would sign on the inside of the hard cover. I cherished these books when I was little. I still do. Aside from his brown, non-functioning wrist watch, the books are the only tangible leave-behinds from my Grampa. Sometimes, as I read one of his books to my own children, I think how cool it is to have such a collection, and to have the chance to pass down something from a family member. I believe that my Grampa can see us as I read books to his great- grandchildren.

I only have two fleeting personal memories of my Grampa. In one, the sun shines through my parents' front door window as I stand at the end of their foyer. My Grampa is being carried out of the house on a stretcher. He might be wrapped in a blanket. That's all that I have from this one image. In the other memory, my Grampa isn't even present. I am in my Dad's car driving home, and we are stuck in traffic. All I remember was starting to cry because I wanted to get home to see Grampa.

This day, around 8:45 a.m., marked thirty-five years since my Grampa passed away. He died of pneumonia from being bedridden, but the real culprit was emphysema, from decades of smoking. I think he picked up the habit while serving in the U.S. Navy before World War II.

He often told my Dad that San Diego, California--where Grampa was stationed for a while--was the most beautiful city he had ever seen. When Becky and I visited San Diego in the summer of 2005, I thought of my Grampa and wondered about his time there.

Did he know I was in the city that he loved? I like to think so.

I've often thought and wondered about my Grampa. What made him so quiet, reserved? What did he like about having me around in his final years? What are the richer details of his life that my Dad and I can only guess at--his own parents and family, his upbringing, hopes and dreams, disappointments? 

Even though I was only three when my Grampa passed away, he has been a presence in my life--if by presence I mean, an almost palpable absence. He sounds like he was a man of few words. But I believe that someday, all the things that I have wondered about my Grampa, and missed being able to ask and know, will be revealed to me, in his own words.

That scene in "Goodfellas"

...or, another title for this post would be "My teenage crush on Elisabeth Shue." Fans of this blog surely know by now that history is one of my favorite topics. Writing is another. And music, specifically '60s and classic rock, is a third. Now, with this post, I will combine all three. I intend to do the same for other songs. Previous music-themed posts included Queen's Freddie Mercury and the 30th anniversary of the Police's Synchronicity.

This fall (it's now winter, technically by only two days but in reality more like a month this go-around) marked the 50th anniversary of a particular song. It's not one that I like for its lyrics; it's no The Boxer, by any means. Yet its lyrics, so simple and devoid of today's excessive re-workings, encapsulate an experience that all listeners can relate to: the first time someone fell in love.

The song is "Then He Kissed Me," by the Crystals (below). They had also sung "Da Doo Ron Ron," which had been released in the spring of 1963.

Here is the description of this ode to young love, amazingly and sweetly and majestically summed up in two-and-a-half minutes:

"Some of the sweetest minutes in all of pop music. Lyrically, it couldn't be any less lascivious: promises of fidelity, taking a boy home to meet the folks, and that kiss sounds more like a quick peck then a tongue-bath. But it's all so charming that it could melt the staunchest libertine's heart.

"The Crystals' indelible ode to chastity and monogamy gave license to a thousand indie pop bands who longed for a time when music wasn't so (eww) sexual, but its real legacy is in everything from the Jackson 5 to New Edition to a thousand teen pop hits from the last 40 years. They're songs for audiences trying to articulate the rush of a first crush before the sticky biological urges muck everything up. We may not live in a hand-holding world anymore; it probably wasn't much of a hand-holding world even then. But puppy love is still a helluva thing." by Jess Harvell, Pitchfork.com. He ranked this song #16 on a list of the 200 greatest songs of the 1960s.

That's a lofty placement, given all of the tremendous songs that came out in those ten short years. I could easily name about 50 other singles from the glory days of post-war music that I prefer. But 16th it is, for the Crystals' "Then He Kissed Me."

Having recently been re-exposed to the single, (through a clip from "Goodfellas," hence the title's post) I am fascinated with how the studio pulled off so many complimentary sounds in a compact two- and-a-half minutes. It is a solid example of music producer and writer Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound" production. There is hardly a second of silence in this song. Rolling Stone wrote that it was "introduced by a dramatic, catchy four-note guitar riff and driven by thundering castanets and soaring strings." The chorus sings and ahh's; the final instrumental starts a crescendo at the 1:50 mark in a breathtaking sequence; and it all creates a stirring pocket symphony that appeals to any music fan, across any generation.

The guitar riff that features prominently throughout the song's duration, the three separate (and all-too-brief) instruments' intros that begin the song, the foghorn-sounding saxophone, and the less than crystal-clear, sounds like it was recorded with the mic enclosed in a cotton ball quality of the recording are addicting.

I have listened to this song repeatedly simply because there is so much going on in it over such a short stretch of time. Its lead singer, whose voice is nearly washed over at times by all of the music going on unceasingly around her, was just fifteen years old when she recorded it. I know I was not making a mark in American culture or history at 15 years old!  

*       *       * 

My parents started dating just a few months before "Then He Kissed Me" hit the airwaves. That's part of the song's appeal to me, that this single was at least in their consciousness at a time when they fell in love. Another part of the song's appeal is its production.

And a third is this incredible scene from "Goodfellas," which should have won Best Picture in 1990, instead of "Dances with Wolves." My friends and I could not watch "Goodfellas" enough in high school. Director Martin Scorcese's hand-picked soundtrack to his film introduced us to an array of songs from the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s, especially "Layla" by Derek and the Dominos, whose piano finale plays over a prominent series in the movie. That then got us on an Eric Clapton kick.

That restaurant scene has stuck with me for over two decades. It is fluid; no edits, no split scenes. I love when Ray Liotta looks like he accidentally (not scripted) walks into the corner of a table as he leads his girlfriend, Lorraine Bracco, through the labyrinth of a restaurant's inner workings. I love the chatter of people who had been waiting longer than Liotta and Bracco had. They just show up and are instantly treated like royalty and skip everyone in line.

I got into "Then He Kissed Me" and reading about its production because of that scene. This song plays in its entirety at this point in the movie. Scorcese himself selected that song for that segment. It's the perfect compliment for one of the most memorable scenes in a movie ever.

*       *       *

As for Elisabeth Shue, mentioned now ages ago at the beginning of this post? I had a major crush on her when I was a pre-teen growing up in suburbia. 

Shue in "Call to Glory" and in "The Karate Kid"

She sincerely looked like the stereotypical girl-next-door, and she was in many of the movies I liked of that era: "The Karate Kid," "Back to the Future II." She got her start in a short-lived, Cold War-era TV show, "Call to Glory," which I really liked. It had the guy who later was on "Coach," Craig T. Nelson. My sister and her slightly older friend Anne knew Shue from another vehicle, as they were heavily into "Adventures in Babysitting." I knew that Shue was the lead in that farce, and could never allow myself to endure ridicule from my friends if they knew I had rented the movie just to see my crush.

So instead, I snuck around Anne's house as my sister and Anne watched it one afternoon, deliberately making excuses to keep breezing through their cramped living room. The song at the beginning of this movie was "Then He Kissed Me." And this film vanquished all hope that Shue would continue to star in movies I liked and/or that would spare me the threat of being beaten up by my friends for watching.

"Then He Kissed Me" is a classic that causes me to wonder if things really were simpler just one generation before mine. This song truly makes it seem that way, and therein lies another part of its appeal for me.

Paper Christmas Village

At Christmastime, I have always been attracted to paintings, cartoons, pictures, and other depictions of Victorian England or snow-crusted wooden German houses. There's just some charm to timber-framed houses that I have never been able to shake.

For example, take a look at this photo of the centuries-old half-timbered houses in the little town of Dornstetten, Germany:

 

Now, imagine this square free of vehicles and covered with snow. Physical trappings of this special season--the Christmas tree, presents, carolers, the food, the egg nog (holy crap, the egg nog!)--all add luster to the real and the symbolic of what Christmas means...the birth of our Savior, the time to spend with family and friends.

I have long wanted to build, from scratch, such a scenic Victorian-era English town square or a German one in my backyard. I'd fill the windows with little lights, throw down yards' worth of some material that looks kind of like snow (I am blanking on the name, but it's like cotton balls to the power of 100), have Christmas music piped in, and let our kids and their friends and ours stroll through and maybe, for a moment, feel like they went back in time. My Dad and I have talked about this hilariously-doomed-to-fail construction project, but never gotten around to it. Maybe because we have big intentions but little skill and no time.

So, this Christmas, I took my lifelong dream down a few notches. I found this paper snowy Christmas village at a store, and thought it would bring my family hours of entertaining fun and quality time together. I knew it would be too advanced for Mister Moo, but certainly our girls are old enough and skilled enough with scissors and glue to lend a well-intentioned hand to this project.

I broke this doozy out last Saturday morning, minutes after Becky slipped gleefully out of our home for an hours-long choir practice. I snapped this photo around 9:15 that sunny  morning. We had Christmas music playing from my decade-old stereo, barely visible over Goose's shoulders below. I think the look on Mouse's face was foreshadowing how the paper Christmas village creation would come to pass:

 

I took the photo below a half-hour later. By this time, all three of our kids had fled the overflowing dining room table and were instead ensconced in our Christmas tree-shining living room, with Christmas shows blaring on Netflix and popcorn popping for their eager little bellies. I basically "built" this little house myself, and the results would leave anyone wanting. Becky loves to kid me that I do not read directions.

 

That's a fair critique, especially when you will read that I did not even know that much smaller and thus more pliable and useful tubes of glue came with the package. I had put this house together with the regular-sized bottle of Elmer's glue, which came out far too fast and in way too much quantity to do anything any good. 

 

I get flustered easily when my desire to regard myself as a self-taught master construction engineer comes to a head-rattling collision with reality. I do not have an engineer's mind. That said, I vowed to persevere, after a long break to cool off and give myself a pep talk that included the admonition, "Read the instruction manual, doofus!"

 

Minutes later, Goose re-engaged with me on our Christmas snowy village design. She was the one who pointed out to me that the box had the user-friendly glue tubes. She also took full charge of putting the construction paper together that, when done, came to life as a dog house, below. I think she was even more excited to have that finished, because it meant that she could shake an entire bottle of glitter all over its roof!

And here, above, is the final result! Goose and I worked diligently on all of the buildings. Of course, none of them look exactly like those featured in the designer's instruction manual. But that was not the point. My little girl and I had hours of time together, while Becky, once she was done with choir, kept our littler ones occupied elsewhere and thus out of our hair. The roofs overhang too much on one side, the chimneys either precariously lean or fell off, and we wisely opted to just forget about the most intricate parts of the white church's design.

Still, it was a labor of love, and we made it fun. I'm inclined to go online and look for other Christmas village construction sets. It was a nice-when-it-wasn't-maddening-and-patience- testing exercise, and seeing how much Goose got into it was just so cool.

And it will be a lot less time-consuming and cheaper than building life-sized replica houses and squares in our backyard!

A Love They All Share

 

Popcorn, blankets, couch-time, comfy clothes, and Netflix. It's a powerfully fun combination for our kids. It also helps these children's parents get caught up on the routines and the special projects of Christmastime, too.

 

Goose, Mouse, and Moose all love Mickey's Christmas Carol, random Christmas specials, and, perhaps more than any other show right now, Horseland.

A love of hers: Being a little mommy

 

This picture gives me hope that we can survive the next, and last, go-around with a baby and infant in our home. Sometimes, I am quite assuredly unsure of how we will manage it all. But I think we will be in good standing with this orange hat-wearing little mommy by our side when her baby brother arrives.

 

Sure, her hours are severely limited by civic obligations like weekday schooling and body needs like 10 hours of sleep a night. That means Goose will be operating within the confines of a tightly compact window of time, unavailable after 7:30 each night, with no hope of an occasional graveyard shift.

 

But otherwise, Our Dear Goose is Our Super-Excited Little Mommy. Here she is with our good friend's toddler, who looks completely uncertain about how she ended up outside, in snow, in a bigger kid's lap. Goose will be almost seven years old when Baby #4 enters our family. I am fully convinced that she will be a big help to us all, especially to Becky.

 

And as with our third child, there will also likely be some minor power struggles and what appear to be parental coup d'états in the making, schemed by Goose. We will not be foiled in our family roles, but we will most definitely rely on her instincts and help more than we ever have before!

A love of hers: Bedtime stories

 

This photo of Mouse is from October, which is about when one of her latest loves blossomed. Hat tip to our friend, photographer Diane Rose, for her terrific work at the Old North Bridge, which is one of my all-time favorite places in all of the earth.

Each night at bedtime, Mouse sweetly asks for a bedtime story. This is how our home's bedtime goes, post- the ritual of pajamas and teeth-brushing and book reading: We shut the light off, and either me or Becky holds Moose before putting him in his crib, while the other focuses on Mouse. Typically, one Moose is in his crib, the parent who did him leaves the bedroom, leaving the other parent to tell stories and say a prayer with both of our girls, one at a time. Got it? Okay...

We are usually running on, or precariously close to, fumes at this point. One kid heading off to sleep, but the other, older two still awake. And they are so accustomed to our finely tuned bedtime routine that neither can bare wild deviations from course.

But Our Little Mouse, above, simply loves hearing a bedtime story about me (if I am doing the final stage of the bedtime routine) or Becky (if she is in the trenches). Let me tell you, we have a supremely captive audience of one when Becky or I start regaling Mouse with a true- to-life story from our childhood. These stories of our younger days are the ones that Mouse especially loves to hear.

Last week, I blew her five-year-old mind by telling her, in that night's one bedtime story, that when I was a little boy, we did not have DVD's or, for much of my childhood, even VHS tapes. So, I told Mouse, when we wanted to watch "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," or "Nestor, the Long-eared Christmas Donkey," or "Mickey's Christmas Carol," which is my personal favorite Christmas cartoon ever...we had to be at home, in front of the TV, right when the show started. If we missed it, we needed to wait until the following Christmas. No shows magically manifested themselves on our computers, because hardly anyone had a computer at home.

Mouse simply could not believe that her parents had endured such primitive privations. What a horrid fate! One never knows just how much our little girl retains in her stuffed- with-comedic-tidbits mind. But a few days later, she recounted for Becky, in excruciating detail and at the excruciating bedtime witching hour, my anecdote of a childhood rendered empty and, in her mind, quite possibly meaningless without such modern entertainment conveniences.

Mouse's reaction reminded me of the time my grandmother told us grandkids, at a family function, that when she was a little girl on the family farm in New Hampshire, they only had an outhouse, and they only had yesterday's newspaper at their disposal in said outhouse. To her dying day, my grandmother always pronounced it "New Hamp-shy-er," and not, as most people now say, "New Hamp-sure."

This is an endearing tidbit about a nightly ritual with our little girl. But it is getting harder to regale her with richly detailed, funny, and my childhood-specific stories. So far, Mouse does not care one iota about my life after the time I started junior high. Understandably, I guess, stories from the time I was about Mouse's age resonate so much more.

I think I need to stop blogging and instead take mental trips down memory lane for her sake, and for mine!

A love of his: Shoveling

Mister Moo loves to shovel. This is the first winter that he has understood better; the first one where he is truly excited about snow and getting outside. It is a lot of fun to see him develop such a connection to the seasons of New England. He is also passionate beyond his years for shoveling. Our little guy's biggest loves of the moment are:

*His parents
*Watching "Mighty Machines" on Netflix
*Popcorn
*Having me hoist him up in the air and playfully, carefully plop him on a bed
*Shoveling and digging

It is kind of a shame, for him and for me, that Moose was not physically and mentally able to help out with shoveling last winter. It was one of the worst winters for snowstorms in our married life. My aching back could have used his expert craftsmanship and skillful handling of his myriad of blue plastic snow shovels! We have already had two storms that each dropped under six inches of snow, and you'd better believe that Moose was outside as quickly as he could get the morning or afternoon after the snow stopped falling.

When I came home, exhausted, from helping a great friend move today, the first scene that greeted me at our house was Becky and Moose, outside, shovels in hand, breaking up the last bits of stubborn ice on our walkways.

Warmer temperatures arrived today, but even Mother Nature had nothing on our son's determination and enthusiasm for shoveling!

Letters to Saint Nick

Well, we still have not actually mailed our kids' letters to Santa Claus this Christmas. But last week for Family Home Evening, we opted to momentarily cease our study of the deeper meanings of abstract concepts in the Gnostic Gospels (only kidding) to write Goose's, Mouse's, and Moose's letters to Jolly Old Saint Nick.

Goose asked for a doll that walks; a cat; and new sneakers. Mouse also asked for a doll; a dog that doesn't bite; dog food; a cage for the bite-averse dog; a pet duck. For good measure, out of nowhere she added the Chinese yin and yang symbol. We have no idea where she first saw it, but her rendition was pretty darn close to the original.

Moose? He nodded his head to whatever toy suggestions we offered. Blocks, trucks, Legos, and tools.

Below are the still-unsent letters. Each of our kids added their own personal touches. Here is Goose's, which she hand-wrote herself:

 

And here is Mouse's, also done all by herself:

 

 

And in case you wonder what leisure time activity our only son pursues on a daily basis, look no further than this evidence:

 

 

He loves to grab a pair of kid scissors and go to town on any piece of paper within 500 yards of his vicinity. We stole his envelope away before Moose's second-ever letter to Santa was chopped, nicked, and cut into as many pieces of paper as there are snowflakes up at the North Pole.

A new high!

 

With this post, our family blog has hit 192 posts this year. That is a new annual post high for our blog, going back to the year I started this, in 2007. You had better believe that I would not fall short of this goal, which I set on a whim in January 2013. Our blog incorporates several of my passions and interests: writing, recording family moments, taking pictures, bragging about my wife. It is the closest thing to a diary that I keep.

 

Throughout this year, as I've ticked off markers on the way to a new annual post high (such as 100 posts, and the post that passed prior years' total posts), I have noticed the power of writing down goals. It is something that I have previously done casually and infrequently. But as I saw markers pass on my blog post goal, I began making lists for the work and family hemispheres in my life.

 

Sometimes, it's been a struggle ensuring that these goals lists don't fall into the "to-do list" trap. As my favorite church leader, President Dieter F. Uchtdorf, wisely cautioned in an address to church members: "Let’s be honest; it’s rather easy to be busy. We all can think up a list of tasks that will overwhelm our schedules. Some might even think that their self-worth depends on the length of their to-do list. They flood the open spaces in their time with lists of meetings and minutia—even during times of stress and fatigue. Because they unnecessarily complicate their lives, they often feel increased frustration, diminished joy, and too little sense of meaning in their lives." 

 

That advice has repeatedly, in some form or another, lighted upon my mind as I've added new and crossed out accomplished goals on little pads of paper or in e-mails to myself. I have tried to be very deliberate and thoughtful in this goal-setting exercise, to only set goals that fulfill a particular interest (like blog posts), or that are very precise and specific (i.e., "be more present with my kids" is not a measurable goal), or that have helped me stay focused on work assignments, or that will have a quantifiable impact on my life and my family's, like paying off our kitchen (finally done, right after my blood clot scare!).

 

As this year draws to a close, and as I've reached a goal I have had in mind and have worked toward for almost 365 days, it feels terrific. Now it is on to the week before Christmas, and then the new year, and then a new baby in our family.

 

Thanks for reading along!

Christmas Bazaar

Each November, the largest Catholic church in my parents' town hosts its Christmas bazaar. We have been making a day of it for several years now, and it's a fun family tradition. We meet up with my parents, my sister Beth, and her daughter, so it's a nice time to get together with family.

There are crafts for our kids, a visit from Santa (and, in years past, Mrs. Claus joined him), time spent with family friends and old school teachers from my hometown, and a special treat for Becky...in the late afternoon, the bazaar holds a discounted toy bin hour, so she eats that up and has raked in some good toys in years past. We have spent anywhere from two to five hours at the bazaar each year.

On another note, I attended CCD (which many Mormons I've spoken to simply call catechism, a term that I personally have zero recollection hearing any Catholic refer to CCD as all growing up). From first through tenth grades, my weekly CCD lessons were held at the massive church and assembly hall, where the Christmas bazaar is now held. So for me, going to the Christmas bazaar is kind of like a step back in time, a connection to a place and time in my life that's now long gone by. As I've strolled through the bazaar, I have tried to remember people and lessons. Collectively, they shaped my faith and provided a solid foundation for my beliefs, which I've carried with me, though now in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

I am a sucker for space and place as touchstones of my younger self.

*       *       *

That said, I'm about done spending much of a Saturday at this bazaar. The first few years were terrific, and there was a sense of newness to it. But with three kids now, it's harder to wrangle our brood and make sure no one gets lost or hurt or into the wrong stuff in a crowded area. I am not into the raffle tables or all of the homemade decorations, and sorting through tables of kitsch and junk is not my cup of tea. It is an event definitely skewed toward women and moms. If it were a walk-through-able Christmas village, like the Yankee Candle headquarters has in Deerfield, then I'd be a much bigger sport about it. But familiarity and sameness have worn me down mentally.

Bah, humbug! Thy name be Scrooge Timo!

This year's bazaar was made salvageable in my mind because I got to use my Dad's sweet camera. It is an SLR, and the photos it takes are top-notch, especially when compared to our years-old Nikon point-and-click. The camera speed is about a light-year faster, and the picture quality compared to what we've had is like painting on canvas versus painting on office paper. 

(My favorite photo of the bunch).

Now, if someone would kindly leave a gently used Nikon SLR, with all of the trimmings, at the bazaar next Christmas, I would be most appreciative!

Budding talent

I originally intended to name this post "budding sewer," but thought that perhaps some of our legion of readers would think I was talking about an overripe cesspool or other plumbing issue. Not so!

Last Saturday morning, Becky and Goose spent hours together working side-by-side on a Christmas craft project. I "entertained" our youngest two kids by plopping them in front of a monitor to watch Christmas shows with me and bringing them to my work so they could play with the vending machine and make a mess of my office.

At six years old, Our Dear Goose has quickly found a new, more grown-up hobby that she enjoys: sewing! This started around Thanksgiving, when she and Nana (my Mom) worked together on a cross-stitch project. Here are some photos of Saturday morning:

 

The top two photos show Goose working on Mommy's sewing machine. She made that blue handbag as a surprise gift for her sister, Our Little Mouse. We were all so impressed, and Mouse excitedly told Goose, "I am saving this forever!"

 

The last photo, which Becky snapped, shows their project mid-way through. These are toilet paper rolls that the duo wrapped in paper and then topped off with red fabric for Christmas hats. They then drew faces on each one and glued orange, triangle-shaped fabric on each one to create a nose. Inside the empty rolls will go a baggie of hot chocolate mix as a gift.  

 

Becks and Goose made 30 of these that day! It's cool to see Goose latch on to a big-kid project, and to see that she and Becky liked working as a team on something.

Friedl

Yesterday, for the fourth year in a row, our family joined with other families from our church to visit a nearby nursing home care center. It was a tradition that I'm proud to say Becky started herself, when we found out that a friend's aging mother was in a center. The many patients and staff really appreciated our visit for the attention we gave the elderly people, the Christmas songs we sang, the Nativity scenes that our children reenacted, and the brightness our visit brought to what is normally a mundane and lonely scene.

Yesterday's visit was no different in terms of what our kids did and how our visit made the elderly patients feel. This is a Christmastime tradition that we will continue, and it's such a simple thing to do. Our kids from church are already practicing the Nativity for our ward Christmas party, so just a bit more rehearsal goes into preparing for the nursing home visit. 

The payoff is all worth it. Here are some comments from after last year's visit:

"One of the workers said, 'I, too, hope this continues to be a tradition for the Primary kids. It was wonderful to see how much it meant to the nursing home residents. Even those who seemed most challenged mentally or physically were pleased to have a handmade card and genuinely touched when talking about the performance.'"

"A really nice thing happened when I was giving cards to some residents who hadn't been able to make it to the Nativity show. One of them, a blind man, was so happy to have a card with palpable snowmen and snowflakes glued on that he could feel with his hands. He really smiled as he felt the card, and as I read the message to him. So the cards the kids made, each with his or her own personal touch, had a profound effect on the residents, and will continue to cheer them up as they look at the cards."

*       *       *

Yesterday, a touching few moments occurred to me. I was at the back of the nursing home's living room with our wiggly two-year-old, trying to keep him from distracting the patients or the older kids, who stood dressed as angels and shepherds and wise men in front of the roomful of patients.

Nearby, alternately sitting and standing, was an old woman. She was inside a contraption that I had never seen before: a makeshift stall, with PVC pipe or plastic tubing forming a rectangle around a hard plastic seat. It was probably designed solely to keep from her falling, so she must have had some serious falls in the past for the staff to resort to this. No other patient was so situated. I felt badly for her. 

Here's a screen-grab from my dad's video footage, showing our friend and home teacher Derrick and me chatting with our new-found friend Friedl (free-del):

Through an accented voice weakened by age, medication, lack of energy, and likely some combination of those, Friedl said she had been in the care center for one hundred years. Earlier, I had overheard her trying to tell another friend something about how no one there gave her...something. She pointed to her clothes as she tried to finish her thought. 

Friedl is from the former Czechoslovakia. Her accent is German, so I wondered what her life had been like. She clearly had been an adult when she came to the U.S., because she had been unable to totally lose her accent. Guessing at her age (probably late 80's or early 90's), I wondered what she had experienced during World War II. 

Was she, like so many other ethnic Germans, forcibly expelled from her home in Czechoslovakia after the war? That was a common, historically accurate fate, a comeuppance to the ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia (and elsewhere in Europe) for collective national crimes during the war committed by the Nazis.

Did she have any children or grandchildren? 

Who made the decision to place her in a nursing home?

Who ever visited her?

From how tightly she latched on to me emotionally and, at times physically, I got the impression that Friedl rarely has long-lasting human contact, let alone visitors. She seemed so heartened to touch and hold my hand. At random times as we talked, she reached for my hand to hold it. Her weak hands and frail, very thin forearms clutched the pipes of the stall.

Many times, after Derrick moved on to visit other residents, Friedl tried talking to me. Her voice was weak and her mind wasn't very clear. She told me that she remembered me as a little boy in a schoolhouse. She commented on how beautiful my own little boy is. I scanned the crowd to find Becky, our kids, my parents, and our niece. Many people in our group of about fifty church friends were happily hopping from patient to patient, milling on the side talking, or trying to wrangle their own kids--all perfectly reasonable activities in what was becoming a chaotic scene of wheelchair-bound residents, staff, little kids, and a horde of adults. The happiness we all brought and shared was palpable. 

Yet here I stayed, by Friedl's side. I couldn't bring myself to end our conversation, such as it was. As I stood there looking at this sweet, frail woman, a few thoughts came to my mind. I am not sure if these thoughts came solely from my own mind, or if some--or more--came from a higher place. But these thoughts were real.   

Whatever the source, I distinctly felt that Friedl's family was happy I was spending one-on-one time with her. One thought came quite clearly to my mind: "Thank you for talking to my daughter." I felt a confirmation that she is not just someone's daughter--a child of someone now departed and awaiting reunion--but a daughter of God. As such, Friedl is, in a spiritual sense, my own sister. There is no doubt in my mind about that. 

Just before I rejoined Becky in herding cats getting our kids into jackets, Friedl shuffled her movable stall closer to me. She leaned across it and moved her head close to mine. I met her halfway, and we kissed each other on a cheek. Over her right shoulder, I saw my dad, looking at this impromptu scene, with a smile on his face.

Below is another screen-grab, showing Friedl in her movable chair. It's basically a bunch of pipes or tubing fastened together, with plenty of open space between the top, side, and bottom pipes. I thought our son was going to wiggle his way into Friedl's "living room," as it were, but he was content to be held by me.

The man in the far left of the image visits the center often and helps conduct an inter-faith service . He told me, with absolute conviction, that our Savior is coming back soon. 

These were a sweet few moments with Friedl, a person who moments earlier, I had no idea even existed. Through all of the limitations of her health and mind, Friedl's smile was genuine and warm. She was on my mind the rest of the afternoon and evening. I want to visit with her again, and just hope that she is there, if not in mind then at least in body and spirit.

Laughter

Laughter is the best medicine. And this is one of my favorite pictures of our little ones. 

I see this photo and think, "It's all worth it...the good and the bad, the up's and down's of life with a gaggle of young kids, including one not yet on the scene but very much on our minds." 

It is better beyond the dreams I could have imagined.     

Teamwork

We make a good team, me and my two-year-old son!

It is very interesting that some of the simplest and most enjoyable father-son moments in life are also those very same moments that are quite challenging.

For example, right before Becky snapped these photos, I was knee-deep into a project inside our home with Goose, while Becky gave Mouse and Moose a bath. I was making good progress with that project. But as soon as my son was out of the tub and dressed, he wanted to go outside--thus side-lining my indoors project. He could not get that goal out of his little mind. I hesitated because it was freezing outside, and I knew that within 15 minutes, he would want to come back inside--thus leaving me halfway through two projects, when one could have been finished in the same time.

But we bundled up, left the indoors project unfinished, and headed outdoors to rake and vacuum leaves. I had to stop myself numerous times to soak in these moments: My son, who is only two years old, was truthfully busting his tail to help me. And he really was helping me. He used either of those blue plastic shovels to break down a big pile of leaves into smaller piles, which made the job of vacuuming leaves easier. Our vacuum does much better with small piles than me standing over a large mound of them and ramming the vacuum into it.

I know that, intuitively, Moose did not recognize that he was actually making my job easier. But he was. And he's only two! And he gamely stayed outside with me for over an hour. There was nowhere else that either of us wanted to be. I have always loved yard work for various reasons, and I'm excited to realize that, for many years to come, there will be a little sidekick with me to teach, work beside, and share moments with.    

 

No matter where I am, whenever we are together, he's always looking up at, out, and around for me.

 

It is a tremendously good feeling.  

Gross-giving continues

Just when we thought our first annual Gross-giving festivities (see prior post) were over, the party resumed sometime around 1:30 a.m. today. It struck our youngest, Mister Moo, who let it all go. In the process, he woke up the whole family. His eldest sibling, Our Dear Goose, flew into our hallway and, with sleepy eyes and yawns exclaimed, "He threw up in his crib!" 

Somehow, despite the unholy hour, Mister Moo thought the flurry of cleaning-up activities was a hoot. He was babbling and laughing as his parents scrubbed the floor, wiped down his crib, removed soiled everything, and tried to keep his sisters calm. He was the only one who seemed, unmercifully, unfazed by the need to go back to sleep. 

Moose was still talking, cooing, laughing, and asking for water a half-hour after his bedroom light went out, so I first took him into our guest bedroom to sleep beside me. When that failed, because he thought it was a fun slumber party, I brought him back into the bedroom he shares with his sisters, both of whom were still semi-awake. 

I made some room in Mouse's bed, put some pillows over my head, shut their white noise machine off, and curled up next to her. Every few minutes for another half-hour was spent with me verbally coaxing our little guy to shut up please go back to sleep!

It was one of those nights when, no matter how late in the evening it is, you erroneously beg for the morning to just get here. Seriously, I can handle just about any of the disruptions and challenges and trials that we have faced with young children. But man, I cannot wait until all of our kids are old enough to almost-always-bet-on-it sleep well at night. In our family, that's generally been consistent starting around age two, but the odds go in our favor even higher around three-and-a-half. 

With a newborn on the way in a month, it looks like we've got another four years of predictably often and varied middle-of-the-night shenanigans still to come.    

Gross-giving

We Wilson Warriors, like most families in America, were looking forward to our country's time-honored Thanksgiving traditions: being with family, extra time off, and inhaling food in copious amounts. Never did I imagine that, in our home, we would kick off a new Turkey Day tradition as well: quickly and violently hurling out said food.  

We also stretched this new tradition across the Thanksgiving weekend, rather than limiting it to one blessed day. The festivities began at 10 p.m. on Wednesday night, when one of our kids (name and birth-order hidden, to protect child's identity) burst into our bedroom to say that their stomach hurt. Becky was, at that moment, looking up kids' toys online, not two feet away from our child, who was laying across my lap. I rubbed this child's back but we did not think too much about what might happen.

Five minutes later, our child--without moving an inch--suddenly unloaded a steaming, thick, dark pile of goop on my lap. In two words, it was gut-wrenchingly nasty. Becky hopped offline and helped our child into the bathroom, while I sat, unmoving and traumatized, in our bed, with vomit all over my underwear, on my pillow, and on the bed sheet. Within an hour of this episode, quiet and calm were restored to Chez TimBeck5, and our child slept through the night.

Thanksgiving dawned and everyone seemed healthy, although our child lagged as the day went on and barely ate her meals. Friday, our three kids went with me, their cousin, my sister, and my Dad to see "Frozen." The movie was terrific. What wasn't so hot was that our kids each got a good-sized cup of fruit punch and a lot of popcorn, which would come back to bite us later.

Friday evening, Becky left home at 6:35 for her good friend Alyson's birthday party. A group of seven close friends have celebrated Alyson's birthday each year for the last seven or eight years. All three of our kids were supposed to spend two nights at my parents' house, but when one of our three opted to stay home Friday day (the one who barfed on me), our other two kids quickly toppled like dominoes, so we ended up bringing all three kids back home with us instead of enjoying two full days in a house to ourselves. 

Under the circumstances, I was more than happy that our kids came home with us. But it left us unexpectedly looking for a babysitter for Friday night's party, on very short notice. Of course, we didn't find one, so I stayed home with our kids.

Remember: Becky left home at 6:35. Within seven minutes, another of our children stopped suddenly in the kitchen, pitched forward, and unleashed a torrent of fruit punch-colored barf all over our kitchen floor. In between getting this child situated at our downstairs toilet, I cleaned up this mess while trying to keep another of our children from joyfully sauntering through this barf-zone.

A half-hour later, while trying to get all three kids dressed for bed, Goose yells to me, "Guess who just spit on my pajamas?" And there, on our guest bedroom floor, was the evidence, disclosing that all three of our kids had been gut-punched by a stomach bug. 

I texted and called Becky a few times during this health fiasco. She was in hysterics laughing, and gave me the verbal- and written-word equivalent of a hearty pat on the back, saying, "Good luck, love! You can do it!" She didn't get home until about midnight. As a Europe-based co-worker said to me this morning when I relayed these shenanigans to her, "Good for Becky! She deals with it all the time. You can take a turn all by yourself!" She's right, and I was glad--definitely in hindsight more, but even at the time--that Becky stayed out with our friends.    

In a token of thanks for my mop-up duty, this very same bug assaulted me yesterday morning. It felt like I had a mini-locomotive chugging around my stomach for hours, and I was thoroughly out of energy for much of the afternoon and evening. 

Good times! 

Tubes update

On this eve of Thanksgiving, one thing my family is grateful for is modern medicine (and this time, it didn't directly involve me!). We are thankful that Our Dear Goose had a relatively pain-free ear tube surgery last week. There's a bit more to the day-of surgery that I thought we should write down for our family history.

Mommy woke Goose up around 7 a.m. last Thursday. They needed to be at Mass. Eye and Ear for a two-hour pre-op thing. Our little girl was super-groggy when she was awoken, but she was in good spirits. I stayed home from work and got Mouse and Moose fed and dressed, then whisked them off to our good friend Sierra's house. Given the tight timelines, I planned on getting to Mass. Eye and Ear right after Goose's surgery was over, and then being on-call the rest of the day so Becky could get some rest.

As luck would have it, I barely made it to Mass. Eye and Ear due to insane traffic. I got there with two minutes to spare before her surgery was to begin. So, I went up to the kid's waiting room to wait for Goose and Becky to return. A video team from ABC-TV's "Nightline" program was in the kid's waiting room filming a story about a toddler with a brain stem issue who was getting some cochlear implant work. They've been following this toddler and his family since birth; it is supposed to the first-of-its-kind surgery on a child this young in the U.S., so it sounds fascinating.

Kid's waiting room staff then directed me, after a minute of waiting, down to the surgery waiting room. I didn't think anything of it. After getting there, I sat down to read a book, as Mommy and Goose were nowhere in sight. Three minutes later, a nurse walks up to me. She held a light cloth blanket in her hand and said, "The anesthesiologist thinks you should be in the surgery room, so head on back with me!"

I donned a head-to-toe white cloth outfit, met up with Mommy and Goose, and we waited for the next instructions. Goose was playing on a hospital iPad-like device, but we could tell she was nervous. When she saw me walk in, she kept saying, "I want to go home!" We then found out why I--not Becky--would go in with Goose when she got anesthesia: The hospital didn't want to risk any complications with a pregnant Becky if she caught a whiff of anesthesia! No one had warned us about this earlier.

So, Goose and I went into a machine- and tubes-filled room, all the while with our oldest daughter clutching next to me, crying, afraid, and repeating, "I want to go home!" I rubbed her back, told her it would be over soon, and promised her that she could choose everything we would do, eat, and watch when we got home (I had Becky's support on that!). 

Watching your child go limp under anesthesia is momentarily frightening. One second she was sitting up on a hospital bed, scared but focusing on the i-Pad. The next second? She is slowly falling backward into the arms of another nurse behind her, with glazed eyes. As for my eyes, they filled with tears watching this 20-second scene. That's when another nurse put her arm around me, cheerfully said, "Let's go back and see your wife," and led me out of the room.

Becky and I, still in our scrubs-like clothes, chatted in the surgery waiting room for about a half-hour. We jumped out of our chairs when they called for us, and couldn't wait to see Our Dear Goose, who was sleeping on her stomach on a hospital bed, with other sleeping kids who had ear surgery done that morning, in their own beds scattered around a big, open floor with doctors and nurses milling around. We stayed by her side for an hour as she slowly awoke; the nurse told us it is totally normal for a child to go in and out of sleep for hours as the anesthesia wears off.

Goose especially hated a little monitor that was taped to her right index finger. Nothing else seemed to bother her...well, except that she was still in the hospital! Her ears didn't seem to cause her pain. We waited for her doctor to give us his thoughts on how the surgery went (totally routine and trouble-free), then with Goose still in her bed, we walked alongside a nurse who wheeled Goose back to the kid's waiting room floor to recover, eat some food, get back into regular clothes, and get the cleared-for-discharge order. And still that monitor was taped to her finger! Oh how she despised it! 

All in all, it was a seamless surgery and Goose was totally awake and with it by about 1:00. She even walked out to our Blue Bomber mini-van by herself, which then whisked her off to Wendy's for a large chocolate shake and fries! She spent hours sitting on our living room couch watching show and show on Netflix while Becky and Moose (who Sierra dropped off early at our request; she was prepared to keep him and Mouse all day) napped upstairs. 

I'd say that by dinnertime, Goose was 100% back to normal, though she was tired. She cried at the dinner table, saying, "I'm too tired to eat," but perked up when I let her sit on my lap. Given the long day she had, we were surprised that Goose was the last of our kids to still be awake (about 7:30 that night), but she slept fine and went to school the next day, eager to tell her teacher and friends about her ear tube surgery! 

We are thankful for a routine surgery, a hopefully effective solution to her ear issues, and for time together as a family.

More on JFK

Yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's state funeral. People then and now remarked that it was the closest solemn occasion to European royalty and pageantry that the U.S. has ever had. I agree. And yet, as I spent many hours last week reading coverage of JFK's assassination, the conspiracies, and the impact on his legacy, it was not until much later that I really stopped to consider more essentially important points. 

The following snippets, taken from The Boston Globe's terrific week-long coverage, added needed perspective to all of the noise of the "Where were you?" and "What would Kennedy have done had he lived?" As a longtime lover of history, and a native of the Boston area, and as a father and husband, these notes rose above the national implications to focus on what Kennedy's very public death and funeral meant for those truly closest to him, first starting with Bostonians and then with his immediate family:

"The boy from Brookline who learned to swim and sail on the Cape; who studied in Connecticut and Cambridge; who recovered from the war in Chelsea; who married in Newport; who knocked on their doors seeking votes in Everett and Charlestown, attended their VFW suppers and first communion breakfasts, captured their hearts with his wit and grace, his intensity, his humor, his looks and charisma. They knew him, loved him, wor-shipped him here. He was the first Catholic in the White House, and even more, an Irish Catholic descended from potato famine refugees and pick-and-shovel laborers--his portrait on so many mantels. He was their president in a way he could never be anyone else's. And now he was gone."--Eric Moskowitz, The Boston Globe

Then-Lieutenant Governor Francis X. Bellotti: "His life, brief and vibrant, flashed across the heavens like a meteor, touching ours briefly, leaving our eyes burning. Only now is the reality beginning to pierce our unwilling minds. He is gone, and with him a part of the hope of humankind, a part of the life of each of us, never to return. The sun will rise again, life will go on, but it will never be the same. And already, we miss him terribly."

"Everybody still wants a piece of Jack Kennedy, even those whose predecessors formed that half of the country that would not vote for him in a million years, even part of that half that hated him. Here in Boston, of course, Kennedy’s death is something of a personal loss, because we claim him as our own. There are schools, parks, buildings, streets, and many 40 and 50-somethings named for him. His face, forever 46, is indelibly etched in our consciousness. His death, 50 years on, resonates here like nowhere else, perhaps aside from Ireland, because he empowered the city and the region’s largest ethnic group, imbuing them with a sense of endless possibilities that the nuns would have told us was almost too prideful."--Kevin Cullen, The Boston Globe

Kevin Cullen, speaking with current U.S. Congressman Joe Kennedy of Massachusetts, who was born in 1980. This young Joe Kennedy, whose grandfather was Senator Robert F. Kennedy (JFK's younger brother), who himself died at an assassin's hand less than five years after JFK died, said: 

"'I’ve tried not to watch any of this week's news,' he said, and at that moment it occurred to me that, for all the attention given to the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination, for Joe Kennedy, for his family, this was not a media event, not an opportunity for every pundit in every corner to pop off, for everyone to recall where they were when JFK was shot. For young Joe Kennedy, it was just another reminder that he never got to know his father’s uncle who became president, that he never got to sit on the lap of his grandfather who wanted to be president, that he was part of a family that has been given much but also has had so much taken away.

"'The outpouring has been moving,' Joe Kennedy said of a week that remembered his great-uncle. 'What he embodied and represented, in challenging us to be a better country, for us to be better citizens, to be better people, is still important. That challenge still resonates. If you are willing to answer that call, you can serve in the military, in the Peace Corps, whatever form.'  

"Joe Kennedy paused and it took him some time before he said something else. 'But, you know, he was a father, a husband, an uncle, a son. And our family still misses him. For all the history around this, this is a sad day.'"--Kevin Cullen, The Boston Globe