'O Little Town of Bethlehem'

Christmas is coming, and if you want a deeper worship experience in church, that's good news. In addition to the latest worshiptainment song from the radio, chances are good that you're going to hear actual Christmas carols. And by “hear,” I actually mean “sing.”

Traditional Christmas carols have several advantages going for them that popular and trendy worship songs don't. For starters, because American society is largely influenced by Christianity, people usually are familiar with Christmas carols even if they grew up outside the church. They probably recognize with the tunes, and if they have the lyrics in front of them, they almost certainly can sing along with confidence from the start.

Secondly, unlike many contemporary songs which deal strictly with a reductionist gospel of loving God and receiving forgiveness of sins, most Christmas carols are heavy lifters when it comes to doctrine. They'll carry their own weight in every verse, if not on every line.

Carols like “The First Noël” retell the story of the first Christmas around the supporting cast of shepherds and magi, while “O Come All Ye Faithful” teaches good doctrine on the hypostatic union. “We Three Kings” explores the coming life of Christ down to his death and Resurrection, and “O Holy Night” reflects the gospel call for social justice.

And then there's “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” a four-verse meditation on the Nativity itself.

Written in 1868 by Phillips Brooks, an Episcopal priest from the Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia who had visited the Holy Land three years earlier, “O Little Town of Bethlehem” is a song people know of but don't know. Without the lyrics in front of them, most people can sing the first line with great enthusiasm before trailing off into “Da dee da dee dee dum” on Line 2.

If you sang “O Little Town” in church as a child, you probably sang it accompanied by a battered and tuneless organ. When you finished singing, you may even have looked at the carol itself with a measure of pity for all the trauma it had just suffered. Many songs suffer horribly during congregational worship in church, especially when they're sung without enthusiasm and played on an organ.

If your church still uses hymnals you're more likely to find “O Little Town of Bethlehem” than a carol like “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” but there are no guarantees you'll sing it during Advent, on Christmas or during the days leading to Epiphany. It's more of a bench-warmer than a Christmas titan like “Silent Night.”

That's a shame, because this song has what it takes to be a winner. The melody fits comfortably within a one-octave range, and proceeds at a steady, easily managed pace. The carol is lyrically unassuming as well, starting out like the opening montage of a Hollywood movie before delving into its deeper themes.

The first verse of “O Little Town” begins with the camera tracking slowly across a field of stars against the cold night sky before it drops down toward Bethlehem. It's a small town, scarcely more than a village. Many of the houses are hovels, owned by working-class families, although a few are bigger. Winding through the village are roads made of dirt and frozen mud, beaten paths made by the steady footsteps of people and their livestock over the years.

It's night, so as the camera pans through town we see the darkened windows of the houses. The only light comes from the stars and moon above, except for one mysterous source. As our field of vision steadily shifts leftward we perceive an unearthly light, small but steady, coming from the edge of town.

The second verse takes us to a closeup of the manger. Mary is lying on a pile of straw. Her face and her entire body are streaked with dust and dirt, and she is leaden with exhaustion. It's more than 100 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and if it weren't for that Roman census, she and her husband wouldn't have made the trip. It's too much to manage when you're nine months pregnant, but it did have one benefit. All that travel made labor a lot faster than it would have been otherwise.

The scene in the manger is perfectly idyllic, the proverbial calm after the storm. A moment ago Jesus was screaming fit to raise the dead, but he has finally settled down. Right now he's nestled in the crook of Mary's arm, latched onto her breast and lazily drinking colostrum as his eyes close and his tiny body unclenches.

In a moment Jesus will fall asleep and then Mary will too, but that won't last long. He's going to wake up a lot the next few nights, and aggravate his parents to no end. That's how it works when you have an infant.

Now the camera pulls back from the manger scene, and pans up toward the heavens again. It's quiet in town. Aside from Joseph, who is trying to decide if he puts too much stock in his dreams, pretty much everyone in Bethlehem is asleep right now.

That’s a shame because the people in the town are missing quite a show. The gates of heaven are open wide, and the angelic host is looking in amazement at the scene below them. While the stars themselves announce the birth of Jesus to anyone who is watching, the angels are lost in worship to the God who is at once too vast to comprehend and yet so tiny and vulnerable that it beggars description.

As rare as it is that we sing “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” it's rarer still we sing the third and fourth verses. That's our loss. The third verse contemplates the unassuming gospel, which by its nature comes silently and without fanfare or acclaim to the meek; rather than with the might and bluster we ourselves often rely on to advance it.

The fourth verse moves to entreaty, asking for our own transformation. Two things I find compelling about this verse: Rather than focusing on the crucified Christ we focus on so much, it welcomes the infant Christ into our lives, and it does so with the title Emmanuel, God-with-us.

Why is this important? I can't speak for others, but too often I take the adult Man of Sorrows for granted. I pause, consider his death for my sins, breathe a quick prayer of contrition and ask for forgiveness, and then I move on, my life largely unchanged. You can't do that with a child.

I became a father 17 years ago. I can think of nothing that upended my life more than the arrival of my daughter on that October afternoon. My wife and I had altered our lives to accommodate one another, but either one of us could and often did manage just fine without the other around when it came to day-to-day living.

I went to work in the morning and came home in the evening, just as I had done before we got married. My wife did the same with her studies and teaching post at graduate school. The big change in our lifestyle after our wedding was that now, when we returned to the apartment for the evening, somebody else would be there. That was it.

Not so when Oldest Daughter arrived on the scene. She required our presence in her life constantly for food, for comfort, for cleaning and for education. If she was hungry, we had to drop everything and feed her. If she was upset, we did our best to comfort her immediately. As soon as she started babbling, we started babbling back to encourage her to speak. Even a trip to the supermarket or to a friend's house was altered fundamentally by her presence. She didn't run the house, but her well-being became our highest priority, even above our own. If she couldn't sleep because of an ear infection, we didn't either.

It's been 17 years now and Oldest Daughter has learned remarkably well to stand on her own two feet. She gets herself food, works her own job, and pursues her own learning at high school and at home. For all that, our lives remain ordered around her needs, her goals and her for her own sake, because we love her. The same is true for her sisters.

In that sacrificial and occasionally selfless devotion to her life and well-being, I see a shadow of the life-upending transformation that Christ can bring when the unassuming infant from the manger arrives in our midst and compels us to place someone else truly first.

That's not just singing a song. That's worship.




Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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The lyrics:

O Little Town of Bethlehem

1. O little town of Bethlehem,

How still we see thee lie.
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting light.
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.

2. For Christ is born of Mary,
And gathered all above
While mortals sleep, the angels keep
Their watch of wondering love.
O morning stars together
Proclaim the holy birth!
And praises sing to God the King
And peace to men on earth.

3. How silently, how silently

The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming,
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him still,
The dear Christ enters in.

4. O holy child of Bethlehem,
Descend to us, we pray.
Cast out our sin and enter in;
Be born to us today.
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell.
O come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel.

that empty feeling

La knabinoj are at school today.

 

For Evangeline, this is a return. She has finished third grade and embarked on a journey through fourth. She was a little nervous when we walked there this morning. It's a new grade, a new classroom, and a change from the summer, where she's been free of the artificial strictures of a school environment for two months.

 

For Rachel, it's a new world. She's visited the charter school many times, helping out as I volunteered in a class, and so she knows her teacher and many of her classmates as well. She was more excited than nervous, although one of the new classmates succeeded in making her feel nervous by invading her personal space almost as soon as she was through the door and asking her questions in a loud voice.

 

And me, I'm feeling a little discombobulated myself. I've been a stay-at-home dad for four years now. I taught each of my girls how to read, write and do basic math, and I've scheduled much of my life around them and their needs during that time, particularly this past summer. To the extent that one person can define another, their lives have defined mine for four years now, particularly Rachel for the last two.

 

And now they're somewhere else, and I'm left alone in the house to look for a job and work on my writing.

 

I'm going to be inconsolable when they go away to college.

teach your children well

I recently told my best friend that I've introduced my children to several clean Flying Circus sketches, like "Buying a Mattress."

He groaned, and then admitted that he often feels inferior as a father when he thinks of the close bonds I enjoy with my girls, the time he knows I share with them, and the activities we do together ... and then he feels much better when I tell him things like "Evangeline knows all the words to 'Spanish Inquisition.'"

A typical day in the life

Friday went like this:

7 a.m. Time to get up and to wake up Evangeline.

7-8 a.m. Get Evangeline her breakfast, pick out her clothes, make her lunch. Take Synthroid.

8 a.m. Take Evangeline to school.

8:30 a.m. Get home from dropping Evangeline off. Grab some breakfast.

8:45 a.m. Go with Rachel and Natasha to Rache's preschool.

10-11 a.m. Watch Rachel and her classmates perform a circus.

11:30 a.m. Return home. Prepare lunch for everyone.

Noon. Go outside, dig up goldenrod, chrysanthemums, Rose of Sharons, and possible forsythia to take to Evangeline's charter school for planned flower bed, saving school a small fortune on plants.

1:15 p.m. Pick up Evangeline at school. Work with her and Rachel to transplant aforementioned plants into pots with enough potting soil for them to survive until planting time in a few weeks. Also, water the seedlings in the greenhouse.

2:30 p.m. Parent-teacher-student conference with Evangeline's teachers.

3:10 p.m. Back home. Get the children a snack, then finish grocery list.

4 p.m. Go shopping.

6 p.m. Time for dinner. Wimp out and eat premade food.

7 p.m. Start load of laundry.

7:15 p.m. Fold previous load of clean laundry and put it away.

8 p.m. Begin cleaning dishes to put into dishwasher.

8:30 p.m. Bedtimes! Assist with bedtime rituals, including teeth brushing, stories, and goodnight kisses and prayers.

9 p.m. Put laundry into dryer.

9:15 p.m. Resume cleaning dishes.

9:40 p.m. Start dishwasher.

9:42 p.m. Oh boy! Time for myself!

I suspect this complaint is universal to housemoms and housedads everywhere.

My dad made his mark by doing things with us

I like to think that my father has rubbed off on me and how I related to my children.

To hear my mom describe it, my dad had no idea what to do with these four squalling kids that life had dropped in his lap; still, I think he did all right. When we joined YMCA children's program Indian Guides dad was a regular volunteer; and even though he hated camping, he almost always went when we did. I don't think he knew a thing about soccer, but he became an assistant coach when he and mom made me join a soccer team in middle school. And every Sunday morning for about 10 years, he helped my brothers and me deliver newspapers on our paper routes.

My favorite thing was walking the dog with him. We did that most nights when I was in high school, and when I came home from college I would still go walk the dog with him. I did it all the way up until about two years ago, when their black Lab died of cancer. It was a great bonding experience.

These are the sorts of things I like to do with the girls, even when their help is counterproductive. It's time spent together. That makes conversation easier and more organic, and it also just plain undergirds the relationship we have. It also teaches them responsibility.

When we look for ways to add meaning and value to our lives, especially the time we spend with our children, we're asking the wrong questions. The question isn't what to do to make life meaningful, the question is, "How is my life meaningful?"

The meaning is there. It's already inherent in life, and invariably the divine meanings are expressed through and in the relationships we have here on earth.

Shopping carts for multiples

When I take over the world, shopping carts will be available at all retail outlets, for parents with multiple children. Already, although I lack world power, this initiative is having some measure of effect. Read the letter I sent to Home Depot a while ago:

I am writing to express my extreme dissatisfaction with an area of customer service that your company apparently has overlooked: child safety and shopping carts.

I was at the Milltown, Iowa, Home Depot earlier today, hoping to pick up a few things. Because I had two toddlers with me, I did what I always do first: I looked for a shopping cart with seats for two children.

Imagine my disappointment not to find one. I talked with a couple employees who told me the store doesn't have any, even though the matter has been brought to the attention of the store manager before.

Let me put it bluntly: A regular shopping cart is *not* safe for two children. A moment's inattention on a shopper's part -- such as to look at a prospective purchase -- will give a child enough time to stand up, fall out of the cart, and hit the concrete floor with his head, causing serious injury and even death.

Even if a child does not climb out, putting him in the main part of the cart -- the basket -- limits a customer's ability to shop. Would you put drain cleaner in the cart with a child? How about fertilizer? Sharp tools? 

Shopping carts with seats for two children are common at other stores. I use them at the supermarket all the time and at some of your competitors. Having access to one at Home Depot would keep my children safe there and it would limit your liability in the event of an incident like the ones I described up above.

I urge you to take measures to rectify this situation before something does happen.

And then I got this (presumably form) response, the next business day. I was impressed by the speed of the response, but I have to admit I haven't been back to the Home Depot since to see if there have been more substantial changes. (I filed the same complaint with Walmart the same day, but since I don't like to go there either, I don't know what they've done. Not surprisingly, they never responded.)

Hello David Learn,
Thank you for your e-mail to Home depot Customer Care! [Note they don't know how to capitalize the spelling of their own store name. --Dave]
We first want to apologize for any inconvenience we may have caused you. A formal complaint was made against the Milltown Home Depot. This information will be addressed to the proper Management and will also be filed here in our Corporate office. Thank you for your time in letting us be aware of your experience.
If we can be of any further assistance, please feel free to contact us again.

Think we can get a movement going? Put yourself in the position of a single parent trying to get shopping done with two toddlers in tow. It's virtually impossible to push two carts in order to give both kids the coveted seat, or to push a stroller and cart at the same time.

At Wal-Mart, the store manager offered to have an employee watch my children while I shopped. (As with Home Depot, I was out with both Isaac and Evangeline by myself.) But think about it: In this day and age, how many parents are going to feel comfortable leaving their children with a complete stranger while they shop? I sure wouldn't.

Anyway, lettuce agree that it is fun to cart around our children like a tiny sack of potatoes when we're grocery shopping. Orange you glad that it's not really a problem? Natasha egg-spects me to help with shopping, and while it would would drive some people absolutely bananas, I'm very cereal when I say spending time with my kids -- even at the supermarket -- can really Cheerio me up. I get a real Kix out of it.

That emptiness that fills a lost child's place

I wander the house in a daze, looking for the boy who isn't there.

I hear him running my way, making that peculiar humming sound he makes when he's excited, but when I turn my head to look, the hall is empty. There are no arms stretched out to grab me, no face bursting with a smile that stretches from ear to ear.

At times the silence is too loud, too empty. I want to hear those songs he's nearly learned from us, the ones where he doesn't know half the words and can't pronounce the other half clearly. I listen, but his music is gone.

Isaac lived with us for only a short time, no more than nine months. A foster child in our care since mid-January, he's returned to his parents and I'm left dealing with the loss of a son who was never mine to keep but who will always be a part of my life.

It's hard to believe it's only nine months since the day a worker with the state foster care system dropped him off at our house.

Even though he was 23 months old, he could barely stand for five seconds without falling down, but that didn't keep him from getting into mischief.

Less than five minutes after he arrived, Isaac had tried to chew on the dog's bone, pulled our potted aloe plant off the shelf and fell more times than I thought was possible.

Isaac was put into foster care because of neglect. His parents bathed him fastidiously and gave him food, but neglected him in nearly every other way. Other children his age are little boys; he was a big baby.

As the days slipped into weeks and the weeks became months, Pinocchio gradually became a real boy. Progress came slowly at first, but it built speed steadily.

We started with walking. I took him to walk the dog with me religiously, and by the end of the spring, he was walking like any other 2-year-old, although he still fell more often and more clumsily than other children. There is a reason his nickname is "Lumpy."

He learned within a week how to climb stairs and within two months, he learned how to climb back down.

We taught him to wait quietly for a meal instead of whining, and then we taught him to ask. He learned to eat with his fingers, and then how to do it with a fork and spoon.

The boy who could sit still only for "Sesame Street" soon learned the joys of curling up with his abba or eemah and being read to.

Longest in coming were his language skills. When he first arrived, Isaac could say "tickle-tickle-tickle" and "gootchy-gootchy-goo," but little else that was recognizable.

The day he asked for crackers by holding out his hand and saying "Some" was one of the sweetest days of my life. It meant that at some level, he finally was understanding why we use words.

But as the year stretched on, there was a shadow growing over my happiness. As much as I love him, Isaac is not my child. The state believes he belongs with the people who gave birth to him, and so to them he has returned.

It's a decision that has filled me at times with despair, with fury and with bitterness. At times, it has left me incapable of functioning even on the most basic levels at work and at home.

I'm mad. Mad at the state for putting my son back with people who don't know how to take care of a child, mad at his parents for what they've done to him, and mad at myself for not being able to keep the promise I made to Isaac to keep him safe.

Friends tell me to have faith, that God sees what is happening and will take care of Isaac. Cold comfort there, since my faith is in a God who did nothing but sit on his hands as his own son was tortured to death.

I cry at the injustice of it all, and I long for a day when this world will make sense. It's fundamentally wrong for a child to suffer as Isaac has suffered, and it's wrong the way my daughter has suffered.

I see it in her eyes when she asks about Isaac, the way she calmly announces what he wants to watch on TV or what toys he wants to play with. She misses him.

Not quite 3 years old, Evangeline has learned a lesson I would have preferred not come until she is old enough to understand it better: Loving someone is an invitation to pain.

In time, I am told, the pain will lessen. The ache in my heart will dull and there may even come days when I don't think of the son I have lost.

But for now, none of that matters. He's gone.



Copyright © 2002 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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blue must die

Fun things your child can do with her stuffed Blue toy:

• Make you buckle Blue in with a seat belt
• Put Blue in time out
• Let Blue wear some of her hats
• Make you put a pair of shoes on Blue's feet so Blue can go outside
• Sing about getting a letter
• Leave clues everywhere
• Make daddy use his "Blue" voice until he wants to shoot Steve, Joe and everyone else connected with the show

father's day for foster dads

I have three reasons to celebrate Father's Day this year. The first is 2½ years old and has been calling me "Daddy" for over 18 months. The second reason is due Nov. 5, and probably won't call me anything for a while. The third reason is a little boy who is not my son, but to be honest, I couldn't love him any more than if he were.

Let me tell you about Isaac. He arrived at our house in mid-January. As soon as he was put down, he ran across the floor full-tilt, waving his arms at eye level and excitedly screaming, "Eeee!"

In less than five minutes, he had fallen down so many times I lost track. He nearly pulled a potted plant off the window sill, and he tried to put more than a dozen things into his mouth, ranging from my daughter's toys to leaves from our aloe plant to a bone the dog had just been chewing.

That was my initiation to the world of foster parenting.

Over the next few days, other problems became evident. Even though he was 23 months old, Isaac could barely stand, let alone walk. When he did walk, he found cars more interesting to watch than where he was going, so he fell what seemed like five times a minute.

Also, Isaac rarely smiled. His preferred facial expression was an utterly blank one in which his mouth hung open and drool streamed out. When he became upset or frustrated, he would twist his face in anger. He seemed to possess no other expressions.

And while my daughter, Evangeline (a little more than three months older than Isaac) could speak in mostly comprehensible sentences, Isaac's vocabulary essentially was limited to two clearly recognizable words: "tickle-tickle-tickle" and "gootchie-gootchie-goo."

Our situation is hardly unique. There are 4,775 foster homes in Iowa, with 193 located here in Mercer County. These foster parents provide homes to 128 children in the county, or to 6,679 children statewide. While two-thirds of foster children statewide are black, like Isaac, in Mercer County the figure jumps to 72 percent.

My wife and I decided to become foster parents when Isaac's mother, who had started attending our church a month earlier, had her children taken away for severe neglect and for failing to provide adequate supervision.

"For us to put a child in foster care, we can do it with the parents' voluntary consent, we can do it with a court order. Third, we can do an emergency removal and then go to court," said Joe Delmar, a spokesman for the state Division of Youth and Family Services, which runs Iowa's foster care program. "Usually, we'll be directly involved with the family for some time. There may be other issues."

When a child is in foster care for 45 days or longer, a child placement review board must look at the situation and determine whether the situation truly is in the child's best interests.
"There's a whole system of checks and balances," said Delmar.

DYFS subjects prospective foster parents to a thorough background check, including references, a criminal background check that covers the past five years, and a check for any records of child abuse.

"Once (the foster parents) complete all the background checks, they are required to go through a course," said Delmar.

The course includes 24 hours of training in foster parenting, with an additional 14 hours required every two years, to keep current. The instruction addresses issues that parents might encounter in foster parenting, such as children with emotional problems or with severe physical challenges or needs.

My wife and I bypassed this requirement by taking part in an alternate form of foster care signed into law in January. Under the kinship care program, relatives and family friends also may become foster parents at the request of the child's parents, provided they pass the necessary background checks.

"The rationale with kinship is it's important for a child to have some sense of continuity," said Mr. Delmar. "The kinship program was established to encourage relatives to step forward and raise a child, but the most important thing is maintaining continuity for the child."

Beyond that, differences between kinship care and regular foster care are largely pecuniary. My wife and I receive $250 a month from the state for taking care of Isaac, a sum we plan to invest for his education whether he remains with us or returns to his biological parents.

Under the regular foster care program, foster parents receive $412 a month for children up to 5 years old, $444 for children 6 to 9 years old, $464 for children 10 to 12 years old, and $516 a month for teenagers.

"The levels go higher if the child has special needs or is HIV-positive," said Delmar.
The state also provides Medicaid coverage for the children, regardless of the program they are placed through.

In past years, children could languish in foster care limbo for years, unable to be adopted by their foster families yet uncertain whether they would ever return to their parents.

In 1997, the federal government passed the Adoption and Safe Families Act, which limits the time children are allowed to remain in the system. Under the provisions of this act, if a child spends 15 out of the past 22 months in foster care, DYFS must file for a termination of parental rights and put the child up for adoption.

"A lot of our adoptions are foster parents adopting their foster children," said Delmar. "If the foster child becomes clear for adoption, they are given a chance to adopt the child."

In Isaac's case, this would mean he could be eligible for adoption by March 2003. My wife and I already have told DYFS that we would be willing to adopt him if we are allowed.

Still, even with 6,679 children in foster care in 2001, there were only 833 foster parent adoptions that year. This does not necessarily mean that the foster parents' involvement with their foster children is at an end, although it usually does.

"We have had some cases where, after a child has returned home, the parent reached out to the foster and continued to involve them," said Delmar. Such arrangements are solely private and are not monitored or arranged by the state.

For those children who do return to their biological parents' custody, a DYFS caseworker is supposed to check on the children periodically to ensure that their home situation is still satisfactory. If it is not, DYFS will reinvolve the courts and could ask for the children to be placed in foster care again.

"It's not uncommon — maybe a quarter of the time — that a child who's been in foster care needs to be taken back out," said Delmar.

Isaac has made considerable progress in the five months he has been with us. Because I usually take him to walk the dog with me at least once a day, he has reached the point where he rarely falls down, and when he does, it's usually deliberate or the result of inattention, rather than inability.

He has gone from expecting us to feed him to feeding himself with a fork and spoon. His vocabulary, while still limited, is growing steadily; it has already reached the point where he is stringing words together into two-word phrases.

And one of the most visible areas of improvement is obvious as soon as he smiles. Because he does smile a lot these days, and it's a smile often mixed with laughter. One thing he's not allowed to do, however, is to call me "daddy," not even on Father's Day, because that's a name that should be reserved for his biological father.

"The relationship would be similar to an aunt or an uncle's relationship, someone that the child can love or trust, but you don't want to step on the rights of the parents or guardians and cause any confusion to the child," said Delmar. "The balance is really maintained on the individual level."

For some foster parents, that means arrangements like respite care. When the foster parents are traveling or going on a family vacation, DYFS can arrange a temporary foster home for the child for as long as the foster family will be away.

Not everyone is comfortable with that. My wife and I aren't.

"Others want to open their heart a little more and push the boundary back," said Mr. Delmar. "It really depends on the comfort level of the foster parent."

As with most parents, our thoughts continually return to Isaac's future. Beyond the next few months, his future is uncertain.

This Father's Day will be a bittersweet one for me. As much as I love Isaac, he is not my son. The goal of foster parenting always is to take care of somebody else's child until they're ready to take the children back and care for them again. Only about one foster child in six is put up for adoption. The rest return to their biological parents.

It's entirely possible that on Aug. 15, the courts will decide that Isaac's biological parents are ready to regain custody, and he will be gone from our lives as suddenly as he came, leaving a hole in my heart the size of a child.

"It's difficult for our foster parents who have become close to their foster children," said Delmar. "We always try to remind them there is no guarantee of adoption. With foster care, it's understood that it's temporary and the main goal is the foster child's happiness."



Copyright © 2002 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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When customer service breaks down at the local restaurant

There are three things I hate about eating out. Not having a baby changing station in the men's room is one of them. Needing to wear long pants and a sweater in the middle of the summer is a second.

But the worst one has to be the way waiters like to take my food away before I've finished eating. You would think that since the waiter is the one who took my order, he should be aware that I probably have designs on those last eight ounces of my 10-ounce New York strip steak. But somewhere between taking my order and asking if everything is all right, most waiters' brains short-circuit.

Part of this might stem from a misguided attempt waiters make to spare their customers the embarrassment of waiting around for five hours, twiddling their thumbs and whistling along to old Tiffany or Rick Astley tunes as they try to get the waiter's attention, while the food slowly turns green and hairy.

The truth of the matter is that restaurants specially train their waiters to snatch food away from hungry customers. These commando waiters watch from a safe vantage point where the customers cannot see them, and study their customers' body temperature, posture and conversational habits.

At the critical moment when the customer is distracted, the waiters strike and make off with the uneaten portion of the meal, which they carry to the kitchen and -- in great deference to the starving billions worldwide, including the customer who is now staring, fork in hand, at an empty table -- toss it into the garbage.

This might seem like a clever ploy to speed customers through their relaxed and enjoyable night out so the restaurant can serve more customers, but that's only the beginning of the plot. The truth is that restaurants count on customers not to be confrontational and to ask for an overpriced dessert menu item instead of trying to keep their food.

"Why yes," waiters imagine their customers -- especially those who skip off to the bathroom for five minutes partway through a meal -- I realize I paid $11.95 for this ridiculously small portion and have had only two bites, but I'd love it if you would throw it out for me. While you're at it, could you starve some Ethiopians too?"

One time it really annoyed me, Natasha and I were eating at TGI Friday's in North Brunswick, N.J., with her uncle. I left the table for two minutes. When I came back, my plate was gone, and with it half my order.

And I don't mean Natasha helped hersel, although she has been known to do that.

"Can I get you anything else?" our waitress asked about five minutes later.

"Yes," I wanted to snap. "I'd like you to give me back my food that you threw away."

Two things constrained me: first, the manners I learned as a child and the desire to make a good impression on my uncle-in-law, whom I just had met; and second, I really didn't want her to dig the food out of the trash. God only knows what would have been on it.

So I bit my tongue and said nothing, and tightened my belt that night when I went home, to cover the hunger pains.

No more. I'm tired of being pushed around by high-schoolers and college students. I've decided to fight back. My inspiration for this, as in much else, is my beloved wife.

Back when she was pregnant with our daughter, Natasha was unstoppably ravenous. A waitress at some restaurant we were visiting noticed Natasha had paused eating for five seconds in order to respond to a comment I had made about a movie we had seen recently. The commando waitress swooped down on our table from wherever she had been hiding when I had wanted a refill on my Coke, and snatched up Niki's plate.

"Let me get rid of that for you," the waitress said pleasantly.

I never had seen Natasha move so quickly. Before I could say, "Halla banana o'wickle sticks," Natasha was out of the booth and running across the floor. She slammed into the poor woman, grabbed the plate with both hands and growled, "I'm not done with my potato yet!"

The rest of dinner passed without incident, but I noticed an animal-control van circling the restaurant when we left half an hour later.

On a recent Saturday, Natasha and I were having dinner at Jonathan's Cork in Tucson, Ariz. I won't explain why we were eating at such an upscale restaurant because that would unduly embarrass Ted and Michelle Kaseler, whose wedding rehearsal we just had come from.

I was about three-quarters of the way through my salad when my wife reported that our daughter had received and answered nature's call, and that I had to take the baby back to the men's room and change her diaper. (Now you understand my opening remark that restaurants should have changing stations in the men's rooms.)

As I stood up, baby in tow, I told my table companions, "Don't let him take my salad. I'm not done yet."

You can guess what was missing when I came back five minutes later.

I was annoyed, not just because "I'm not finished with my salad" had been translated into "He can take it away," but because I really am trying to eat healthier, and this commando waiter hadn't even checked with me first before he throw out what was left of my food. To add insult to injury, he didn't even refill my water.

So when he came back to deliver the main course, I told him about the mistake he had made and that I'd like it set to rights.

"Dave, just drop it," one dining partner urged me.

I didn't. I couldn't. It was the principle of the thing. If he had said my haircut makes me look like Jim Carrey, I could have ignored it. If he had crossed his eyes at me, pulled at the corners of his mouth with his index fingers, stuck out his tongue and said, "This is you," I could have ignored it.

But he hadn't done those things. He had thrown out perfectly good food that he had served to me, without speaking to me first. It was an honest mistake, but it still was a mistake.

I didn't grab the waiter and put him in a choke hold or force him to apologize. I didn't raise my voice or use inappropriate language. But I made my point, and I got a new salad.

And maybe if they see the dirty diaper in the wastebasket in the men's room, they'll realize how fortunate they were that we had taken a changing pad to the restaurant with us, and they'll decide they need a better changing station than the sink counter.

while you're sleeping

Dear Evangeline,

As I write this letter, you are nearly one week old, and sound asleep at your mother's side. It's going to be a few years before you can read this, and even longer before you understand exactly what I'm feeling right now.

This letter is one of the hardest things I've ever had to write. I've made my living from words for nearly four years, but they're failing me now. Nothing can describe the sublime joy and wonder I have felt since 3:36 p.m. Oct. 30, 1999, when you were born.

You were born weighing 8 pounds 14 ounces, and when they told me you were a girl, I felt so excited my heart could have burst.

I guess the best way to describe what I'm feeling right now is "surreal." Babies are something that happen to other people, generally people who are older than your mother and myself, or at least it's always seemed that way to me before. I've long wanted to be a father, but somehow I don't think I ever really believed it was going to happen.

But now you're here, and a week after your birth, I still haven't settled down. I can honestly say that I have never felt this strongly about anyone before, except for your mother. There is nothing I wouldn't do for you, and no danger I wouldn't face to keep you safe.

Now that you've been born, I do all sorts of positively saccharine things. I sit for minutes, doing nothing but watch your chest rise and fall, as though the fate of the entire world hung on each breath.

I still feel a sense of wonder as you kick and squirm about whenever you wake up, or when you stretch your teeny-tiny limbs, wrinkle your little face, and cry.

I never thought I would say something so patently ridiculous, but I even enjoy changing your diapers. I enjoy it even at 2 a.m. when you drag me, sleepy-eyed, from my bed, and you choose that moment to christen my bed and my hand.

Then there are those other times, those what-if moments when something doesn't seem quite right. You'll understand these better when you become a parent yourself.

Your mother and I went on an emotional rollercoaster your first few days because you weren't eating well. Last night, I was on one again because you hadn't dirtied your diapers for about 14 hours.

Both of those are completely ordinary in newborns, but I wasn't comfortable until I was assured that nothing was wrong. That's just the way parents are about their children, I guess. I'll try not to embarrass you unduly when you reach middle-school age, but if I do, please understand that I mean it for the best.

Over the years to come, you and I -- and your anticipated siblings -- will do a lot together. I'm sure I'll let you down, and there'll be times you'll wish you had someone different for a father.
But I want you to know that I'm always going to be there for you, and that you always will hold a top place in my heart, along with your mother and future siblings. (I admit, your wedding day will be hard on me.)

There are a few things you'll need to know:

First and foremost, the visible world isn't what it's all about any more than the hokey-pokey is. It's hard to grasp, even at the age of 29, but the only reliable measure of character is how far ahead of ourselves we place other people.

The most important thing I can tell you is to serve God and love him with all your heart. The second-most important is that you can do that only by loving other people as much as you love yourself.

Thirdly, suck the marrow from life, but don't choke on the bone. Enjoy life as much as you can. There are always more people to meet, more places to go and more things to do.

All of them have something you will sorely miss if you don't find them -- particularly the ones everybody else ignores. Seek them out, but stay true to the values your mom and I will try to teach you.

That's about it right now. Later on, we'll get into the specifics of brushing teeth and washing behind ears, making good friends, and what to look for in boys you want to date.

Right now, I'm happy just to change your diaper when it's dirty and listen to you breathing as I hold you against my shoulder.

Right now, I just want to treasure that moment, and enjoy it while it lasts.

Love,
Dad

baby names

My wife and I are in a sort of baby-name hell right now. It's been virtually impossible to find one we like.

We've chosen baby names twice so far, but we still keep searching for anything that might be better than what we already have selected. It's only natural. We'll be out at the movies, shopping for groceries or reading a book, and a chance association will suggest a name to one of us.

"What about Natasha?" my wife asks.

"No."

"What's wrong with Natasha?"

"Nothing," I say. "Except it makes me think of Boris and Natasha from 'Bullwinkle,' and besides, as Jeff Holton pointed out back in college, Natasha spelled backward is 'Ah, Satan!' and I don't want my daughter to have to live with that stigma."

And so it goes with name after name. We've rejected names from Ozymandius and Sennecharib to Zachary and Nicholas, and from Lilith and Hester Prynne to Helen and Kinsey. With only three months to go, there's a growing chance the baby will be born with no other handle than "Hey, you with the diaper."

The hell we're in is quite real. It's located within the Eighth Circle, sandwiched between the simoniacs and the grafters, with all the other futurists.

Everyone knows that unusual first names have the power to ruin a child's school years, and a child with a truly cartoonish name could plunge down The Dark Side faster than Anakin Skywalker and become U.S. secretary of defense, like Caspar "the friendly ghost" Weinberger did in 1981.

Natasha and I have to be especially careful in this regard since, in my experience, the last name Learn can be bad enough on its own. In fifth grade, one girl loved to call me "David Learn About Words," after the vocabulary section in our reading class, and other children were quick with jokes about David "has a lot to" Learn. (Actually, some people still do that.)

My fellow students weren't the only ones keen to start an early career in comedy. Just about every teacher of mine thought it was clever and original to say on the first day, "Well, Mr. Learn, with a name like that, I don't think you'll have any trouble in this class."

So if the pressure isn't great enough already to come up with a good baby name, a group called the Society of Kabalarians has determined an exact mathematical formula for determining how your first name will shape your personality, personal relationships and physical health, as well your personal and business success.

I'm not quite sure how this is supposed to work, but they have all sorts of impressive-sounding babble and 60 years of experience of cultish thinking to back themselves up.

"Your name is your life! It is how you identify yourself. It is how others identify you," says their Web site. "The more insight you have into the powerful influence of your name, the greater opportunity to enjoy the success you are capable of achieving."

For only $60, they'll furnish the expectant parents with an in-depth name analysis that considers the baby's first name, last name and birthdate, as well as any lawn ornaments the baby may resemble in appearance.

I have to admit: I'm impressed. I thought only astrologers were this whacked-up.

But just to be sporting, I punched in the name Orpheus. I received a 255-word analysis that said a child with the name Orpheus would develop a quick, active mind, a desire to associate with people and a love of artistic expression, just like the mythological Orpheus.

The downside is a lack of organization and perseverance, a tendency to overeat, and a strong likelihood to get ripped to pieces by the bacchante after a failed bid at rescuing someone from the Underworld. So the name's not as great as it sounds.

In my search for good names, I've scoured great literature ranging from the Bible and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, to the Berenstein Bears' "The Spooky Old Tree" and "Uncanny X-Men," issues 99-142.

Natasha summarily rejected the names Lucio, Ma Bear and Cyclops, but I wasn't daunted. I have other irons in the fire. As soon as I learned we were pregnant, I asked friends and co-workers for help.

One person, with a clear love of "Popeye," has suggested names like "Sweet Pea" and "Bluto." Other co-workers, evidently the sort of people who made middle school so awful for the rest of us, suggested "Ubetta Learn," "Univer Learn" and "Livand Learn."

Even colleagues I have little direct contact with have suggested their ideas.

"I have always thought that 'Gordo' makes a lovely name for either a boy or a girl," said one fellow, whose nickname -- by purest coincidence, he assures me -- happens to be Gordo.

So I give up. If I can't come up with a show-stopping name myself, I'm sure my readers can do the job for me. What would you name my baby, if you had the chance?

Send me your thoughts, and I'll print the best responses here on a future date. Make sure you include your name so I can be sure to give credit where it's due.

It might not get me out of the Eighth Circle of Hell, but I'm sure it will make the stay a bit more pleasant.

world's end

A little more than two months ago, the world was knocked out of orbit and flung into uncharted space.

My wife and I are expecting. A baby. Our first one.

This is a big event for me, bigger even than finishing my first novel, or when I discovered Neil Gaiman's "Sandman" series of trade paperbacks. It even tops the time a stampeding goat ran over my brother at the petting zoo.

"How did this happen?" I asked Natasha recently. "I don't remember filling out an application to have children."

She tried to explain it to me, but I'm afraid I didn't quite understand it all. What kind of sicko entrusts babies to people who haven't even taken a qualifying exam? I'm still a tender young lad of 28 myself. Who decided I was cut out for being a father?

My pastor tried to reassure me during a recent panic attack that becoming a father really isn't the end of the world.

"People have been having babies for a long time, at least 20 years," he told me. "So far, they've managed to survive the experience."

Of course, if the people who have been having children for the past 20 years were having this one, I wouldn't be alarmed. They obviously know what they are doing by now. But Natasha and I are complete novices.

A baby. The thought makes my mind reel. This is an even bigger responsibility than the time I was asked to cut Mr. Schatz's grass for my brother 17 years ago. I blew that one so badly that Mr. Schatz never asked Herb to mow the lawn again. What's Mr. Schatz going to do to Herb if I blow this one?

I never realized how involved having a baby would be. For starters, everyone keeps asking us if we have found a name yet. One friend of mine -- let's call him "Brian Tarantino" -- observed during his own wife's pregnancy that you can tell people you’ve settled on a name like Quagmyra, and even though they think it's an ugly name, they'll lie and say how lovely it is, especially if you tell them that Quagmyra is your mother's name.

So far I've found that's true. The only disapproval Natasha and I have encountered for the girl's name we've settled on has come from family members who know my mother's name is Ellie, and not Quagmyra.

On top of the whole name struggle is the matter of preparation. A few weeks ago, my sister-in-law hit us with the question of a theme for the nursery. I usually leave such details to the last minute -- my wedding party had to appoint a best man for me, for example -- but Rhonda won't let us off the hook so easily. She insisted we select a theme.

"Rabid moose," I wrote her in an e-mail. "I want nursery decorations that show wild moose foaming at the mouth."

"I'm not going to buy my niece or nephew clothes and toys with rabid moose on them!" Rhonda wrote back, even after Natasha suggested a wild-animal theme, complete with birds, frogs and moose.

I suppose eventually my world will stop spinning and settle into a new orbit, perhaps a stabler one than I've been accustomed to before now. A friend of mine with two sons has observed, "Marriage is the tie that binds; children are the stakes that hold it in the ground."

That's undoubtedly true. But I still wish someone would give me the instruction manual.