High School Sweetheart

Posted by on 20 Aug 2002 Comments Off on High School Sweetheart

Before Cora enters high school, I want to start taking her on dates. By the time a classmate first asks her out, I’ll have been dating her for years.

I doubt that she’ll think of our father/daughter outings as practice dates, but that’s how I’ll view them. I’m going to try my best to model the sorts of dates that I hope she has for herself, and to model the sorts of behavior I want her to expect from a gentleman. I want to find out what’s on her mind and get to know her better. I want to be charming. I want to get her used to the polite respect that she deserves in the hopes that she’ll come to expect it from others.

Sometimes the thought of letting Cora go off with some boy that I don’t know bothers me. But the best way of forestalling any disaster, besides threatening to put his teeth in his stomach, is to prepare Cora with the real thing, so that she can recognize a counterfeit. It raises the bar a notch for those boys when they have to talk to her and engage her interest, and can’t get away with just a cheeseburger and some necking. I mean, come on, dude! I could have a better time with my dad!

Someday her social calendar may be quite full, and it’ll be an effort to squeeze me into her schedule for a dinner together, or for a cup of coffee in the evening. I hope she makes the effort. And one day the roles may be reversed, and Cora will be breaking her dad out of the old folks home for an afternoon together. And she’ll want to know what’s on my mind, and she’ll try to get to know me better, and she’ll be charming, and she’ll give a silly old man the respect she wants him to get from others.

Ask My Children

Posted by on 20 Aug 2002 Comments Off on Ask My Children

Small children are pure observers, with no ideology or interest to color their perceptions. When we teach someone in a scholarly sense, it’s our words and the strength of our arguments that count. Our private actions may contradict our words, but our actions never enter the equation. When we raise children, they learn from our actions long before they understand the nuances of our rhetoric. Taking them to Sunday School once a week — or teaching them to say a bedtime prayer each night — doesn’t mean much if we aren’t living like Jesus the other six days.

This is a comfort and a conundrum. You’ll never be judged too harshly for words you didn’t mean if your actions show that you didn’t mean them, but you’ll also not be let off the hook if what you say and what you do are inconsistent.

Cora doesn’t like that

Posted by on 14 Aug 2002 Comments Off on Cora doesn’t like that

This is about Cora becoming a person. She was an object: the baby. Keep her clean and dry and be quiet so she’ll sleep. Now she has preferences, and sometimes she’ll surprise you.

So Much Mine

Posted by on 4 Aug 2002 Comments Off on So Much Mine

Tina?s away this weekend, on a camping trip with her Pioneer Girls troop. This means that from Friday afternoon until Sunday afternoon, Cora and I are on our own.

Because she?s an infant, I made all of Cora?s decisions for her today: from what she would eat to what she would wear to what games she would play. But something occurred to me as I was spending all this time with her: she may grow up to be very much like me, because, as she learns to make decisions for herself, it?s me that she?ll be learning decision-making from. Disregarding any outside influences, the process of parenting should grow Cora from someone who needs me to make every decision for her into someone who makes for herself all the same choices that I would have made for her.

Think about it: how will Cora learn to make decisions? By learning from me! And, of course, I?m not going to let her make decisions for herself until I think that her decision-making in a given area is trustworthy. So when, do you suppose, will I think that her decision-making is trustworthy? Probably when her decision in some situation is similar to what my decision for her would be; or, if her decision were different than mine would be, then I would think that her different decision was trustworthy only when her reasons for making that decision seem reasonable to me. Either way, good parenting says that I?m not going to relinquish control of an area of her life until I think that she?s making good decisions there for herself.

An example: when will I let her decide what flavor of baby food she wants to eat for dinner? At some point she?ll probably only want to eat what tastes good, without regard for nutrition. During this time, she may be asked what she wants for dinner, but believe me that I?ll override her decisions as often as required to ensure that she?s being properly nourished. I?ll consider my job in this area to be complete when she chooses to eat yucky-tasting vegetables as well as yummy ones, because that?s a diet that makes sense to me.

A song by The Story, called ?So Much Mine,? explores this same idea. The song begins with a typical parental lament of, ?Where?d you get that dress, and where?d you learn to walk like that?? The parent in the song can?t believe that the child who was once ?so much mine? could now have moved out after an argument, leaving her parents behind. The “so much mine” idea really resonates with me: so far we make all of Cora’s decisions for her, and she loves the arrangement. She’s quite happy to be my little girl.

During the course of the song, the mother comes to realize that her child?s fiery spirit resembles her own, conceding near the end of the song that, ?I know where you got that dress, and I know where you learned to walk like that.? Unfortunately, this realization comes too late to provide reconciliation.

I really like this song, and I sing Cora to sleep with it sometimes. It’s a way of reminding myself that she?s going to learn from me, so I?d better make a conscious effort to be worth emulating.

Zen-like Contemplation

Posted by on 28 Jul 2002 Comments Off on Zen-like Contemplation

I purchased a video camera a few weeks ago, thinking that it would be fun in a couple of years to watch videos of Cora when she was a baby. Actually, the fun of watching the videos didn?t really play very heavily in the purchase decision. What did play heavily was the idea that, when Cora was older and more of her own person, and when my ideas of responsible parenting ran headlong into the ginsu-knife-wielding ninja of her sense of personal freedom, I could sit down and watch videos of when she was a little baby and couldn?t imagine anything more enjoyable than playing in my lap and blowing raspberries at the camera.

Anyway, I was filming Cora tonight as she was playing with Tina?s hands. Little girl, one hand gripping mom’s thumb, the other hand gripping mom’s pinky finger. Great footage for me in twelve years when I need to remember how simple parenting used to be. This is the sort of thing that I’ll want to remember, right?

Well, as I was watching the playback of this beautiful scene, I realized that the most dated part of watching this footage in twelve years won’t be seeing little Cora: tiny, perfect, and completely mine. The dated part will be listening to my own running commentary, and hearing me mention Cora’s “Zen-like contemplation” of her mother’s fingers. Zen-like contemplation? Am I a Zen master? No. Do I have any special affinity for eastern religions? No. That reference comes to me entirely out of pop culture: Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme and the rest.

When I bought the video camera, I imagined that having a window back on when Cora was little would make me smile. I hadn’t considered that Cora might smile, too, but for a different reason. These tapes record her parents when they were much younger than she’ll ever be able to remember us. Probably more than watching the things we do on tape, listening to the things that we say might be a great way for Cora to get to know the us that we were when we started to raise her, and to help her understand the joy and the wonder and the uncertainty we felt when raising her was a brand new proposition.

Can’t think ‘tumor’ without ‘um’

Posted by on 25 Jul 2002 Comments Off on Can’t think ‘tumor’ without ‘um’

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been growing more preoccupied with an approaching doctor’s appointment. Hopefully, this appointment would tell me that the cancer I’d had surgery for in January hadn’t come back. Hopefully.

The hard part is not knowing how to spend my time. If I’m healthy, why spend time sitting up at night worrying about an illness that isn’t coming back? Maybe it’s all gone and I’ll live a long and healthy life and never have to deal with it again. In that case, it’s silly to run around somber all the time when I should be overjoyed: I beat cancer!

On the other hand, maybe it’s spread and I’m about to start a frightening spiral of unwelcome treatments and diminishing health. In that case, what am I doing breezing through life when I should be holding my infant daughter and consciously appreciating all of the blessings of faith and family in the uncertain amount of time that remains?

So what do I do? Coast through life like I have all the time in the world? Or else start making all of my plans as if I won’t be alive in a year from now, and start judging the value of everything I do based on that shortened scale? Should I be preparing to die? Um. . .

Well, the doc says everything is fine. I can forget all about it now, if I want to.

I have a life that can be taken for granted. I have comforts and distractions and no good reason to look up from my day-to-day affairs to ponder the whole. And at the same time I have a fantastic wife and a beautiful daughter and all of the blessings anybody could want. Carried by the flow of the day-to-day, I can overlook how precious those blessings would seem if I’d only stop to appreciate them. I guess I’m lucky in that regard, because in six more months I’ll have another cancer check-up, and in the weeks beforehand I’ll start sitting up at night, counting all of my blessings again.

Going Astray

Posted by on 24 Jul 2002 Comments Off on Going Astray

I heard a news story today about civilian casualties from American missiles aimed at military targets in Afghanistan. The report said that these civilian casualties were accidental, and generally caused by stray missiles. That phrasing caught my attention: the juxtaposition of stray and missile. The gravity of the two words is all wrong. Stray is a term used for unmatched socks left over after folding the laundry. It doesn’t sound right when describing a missile that exploded in the wrong place and killed the wrong people. “Don’t worry, Mr. Dari, the United States government doesn’t suspect you of helping Al Qaeda. That was a stray missle that killed your family.” Shouldn’t the seriousness surrounding the firing of a missile preclude the possibility of that missile wandering off target?

I know. I’m oversimplifying. Nobody wants to kill innocent people when they’re choosing targets, and once the missile is launched then physics and weather and terrain and engineering all play a role in foiling the best laid plans. I’m just wrestling with the difference between the ideal situation and the real world.

I also got to thinking about other words that would bother me if I heard them too close together. For instance, a lighthearted execution. Or how about a car crash with just a few fatalities? Maybe an emergency room doctor who sends you home because he’s fairly certain that you’re not having a heart attack?

(web)Site Unseen

Posted by on 22 Jul 2002 Comments Off on (web)Site Unseen

Okay, I’ve spent the weekend working on getting the templates and style sheets in order so that this page looks the way I want. Now I’ll turn my attention to more informative posts than what I’ve done up to now. I’ll keep tweaking, but I believe that the tweak-to-post ratio on this page has now shifted. More information and less presentation.

Not that I think there will be a crowd of people rushing to get in here. In fact, I’m only certain of one faithful reader. (Hi, Tee!)

But the number of people who find what I’m posting isn’t the point. The point is the posting itself. The web in general and the phenomenon of web logging in particular have offered me a chance to communicate, and I’m responding. It’s like the proposition accepted by the street preacher in a crowded subway station. My voice may never rise above that of the crowd, and I have no hope of reaching everybody, but if you come close enough then maybe you’ll hear what I’m saying, and hopefully you’ll be glad that you did.

Today’s entry

Posted by on 20 Jul 2002 Comments Off on Today’s entry

Here’s an entry just so I have something entered for a different day. I want to see what the day separations look like. I’m not really happy with the spacing between the same-day posts, so I imagine I won’t like the spacing between the days unless they really do something to set it off.

Ah-ha!

Posted by on 19 Jul 2002 Comments Off on Ah-ha!

Okay, got it. I took out the “alternate” style sheet link and everything started working in Mozilla. Great!