if you smell a chicken ...

... it's probably me.

This weekend we finally took action to plug up the holes on the underside of our roof. The holes, which measure about six inches across, have been there for about two years and this spring began providing neighborhood squirrels with access to our third-story attic.

Originally the holes served as openings for the downspouts on an ancient pair of gutters that ran along the underside of our slate roof. When we had the roof replaced in 2004, we had the gutters replaced as well, so that we would have something that works and is more or less modern in its design. The downside, of course, was those holes.

The squirrels discovered the holes one fine spring morning this year, when Natasha awoke to the sound of one frantically scurrying about in the attic as it tried to find the way back out. We hemmed and hawed on the subject, and I finally suggested stuffing the holes with steel wool and spackling over it. The spackle alone should keep the squirrels out, but the steel wool would be lethal to any squirrel trying to chew its way back in.

Days passed, then weeks, and finally even three or four months, during which time the squirrels got into a fight with a bird who, feeling in a motherly way, built its nest in one of the holes and defended its home and its eggs with vim and vigor.

This past weekend I borrowed a forty-foot extension ladder so we could settle the squirrels' and birds' fight once and for all.

So why am I a chicken? Because I get dizzy at the mall when I get too close to those cut-away sections of the second floor, where all that stops you from plunging to your death thirty feet below is a glass partition. Because I take the first two or three steps of a ladder very quickly and then my speed decreases along a logarithmic decay curve.

Because I can't stand heights, and I defintely can't stand the idea of standing atop a ladder twenty-five feet in the air and letting go with one hand so I can stuff steel wool into a hole and then spackle over it.

I sent Natasha, and therefore I am a chicken.

Ba-rawk!

redemption: the journey

I do not have to feel "whole" or "complete" or "healed" to be where God wants me, or to experience him and reveal him to others.

Isn't this what Paul talks about in 2 Corinthians? To keep him from becoming conceited because of the surpassingly great visions he had, he was given over to an angel of Satan, a thorn in the flesh, and when he asked to be delivered from it, Jesus told him, "My grace is sufficient for you; my power is made perfect in weakness." If God heals us, we no longer need to depend on him for our daily bread and no longer need to lean on him for strength. But when we have a lifelong and unhealable wound like the Fisher King's, communion with him is essential.

I have spent so much of my life expecting to experience some sort of wholeness or easing of my pain as I got "closer" to God. And isn't that what the church often promises? That although the road is long and hard sometimes, God eventually fills in the chinks and you have a wondrous peace and joy for the rest of your life?

And isn't that a bunch of crap?

It's drilled into you in the testimonies you hear and are encouraged to share as a new believer. You talk about how messed up you were and now how everything's sunshine and roses. It would be unthinkable to share in church that you have a lot of anger and unforgiveness in you heart, that you still feel lonely, that you enjoy S&M or wearing women's clothing,^* that doubt runs deep, or even that you face depression on a daily basis.

Following Christ does keep us out of a lot of life-ruining stuff that we would otherwise get ourselves into -- sexual immorality, drugs, a life of crime -- but the decision to follow doesn't suddenly make us suddenly Christlike in anything except our standing before God. And while I've known a lot of people who have found peace, learned humility, and become tireless advocates for the poor and the needy, even the best of them will admit that they have miles to go.

Redemption is not a decision as much as it is a journey, and the healing of our world-wounded selves is never-ending on this side of heaven.

And perhaps not even there.

^* Well, OK. Those might be bad examples. And I'm sure a woman could share in church without risking judgment or rejection that she enjoys wearing women's clothing, although it surely would puzzle a few people why it was worth mentioning and why she "enjoys" it.

showing my age

Behold, I shew you a mystery:

 

squick

w00t

shipper

 

Okay, that's three mysteries. But what the heck do they mean? What are the etymologies? Sometimes, you know, I feel really old.

 

My absent child: news, updates and gained perspective

Got an update on Isaac and his situation Monday night, courtesy of our friends who adopted his younger sister.

Although he legally remains in the custody of his father — his mother having moved to Florida with a boyfriend and having brought at least one other child into the world — Isaac has been living with his paternal grandmother, his aunt and her two children for the past two years. His father, I am told, does not live there and has virtually nothing to do with him.

Isaac also officially has been diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactive disorder, and was removed from his kindergarten last year because of his behavior problems. He is now attending a special school in Old Bridge, where he can get specialized care for learning and behavioral difficulties.

From what I'm told, he talks fairly well — when he came to stay with us, he was at least a year behind developmentally — and is more or less happy.

So that's good, I suppose.

The ADHD diagnosis doesn't come as a surprise to me. Whether because he lacked any sort of active parenting or mental stimulation his first two years, Isaac was prone to wandering from one activity to another if someone wasn't there to anchor him to it. It was especially bad in rooms where there were lots of toys on the floor, as is often the case when young children have lots of toys to choose from.

I thought he was making progress while he was with us — though I confess I don't have the professional credentials to say that authoritatively — but there was no denying the thing he sat for the most willingly and eagerly was the TV set.

Still, I remember the discipline and focus that we did see as time went on, and I can't help but wonder if he would have made more progress if he hadn't returned to his parents so soon. The visits became especially disruptive to his behavior, particularly toward the end. Still, what's done is done and the water passed under that bridge years ago and long since has wandered out to sea.

I have to admit that I feel a little empty when I consider the situation our friends have with Isaac's sister. They got to adopt her. Every morning they get to wake her up and spend the day with her, and every night they get to put her to bed. She has a little sister and a baby brother who are growing up with her as a natural part of their family.

Meanwhile, I have pictures hanging on the wall and lying in shoeboxes, I have a heartache that remains as raw today as it was three years and seven months ago, and I have a 6½-year-old who misses him just as much as I do.

Part of me keeps whispering "It could have worked out differently," and damn it, that voice is nearly right. It almost could have worked out so that we'd be in the same situation with Isaac as our friends are with his sister.

The courts returned Isaac to his parents in October 2002. Within three months, his mother had left him and moved in with her new boyfriend. After a lot of deliberation and talking with Natasha, I called Isaac's father in January 2003 and said that if he needed any help with things, we'd be available.

And we did help out. I don't remember many weekends we did it, but we watched Isaac for his father, in our own homes, because of his father's work schedule. We didn't ask him to pay us for the food Isaac ate, we didn't ask him to pay for the diapers he used, and we didn't ask him to pay us for our trouble. We had two children of own at that point, and we could have used the money, but we never even asked him to pay Isaac's way when we went some place during the weekend.

At one point Isaac's dad was going to tell his daycare center that we were authorized to pick him up and drop him off. If we had kept taking him on weekends, in time we probably would have reached the same point that our friends did, with Isaac living virtually all the time with us, calling us mommy and daddy, being in our legal custody, and finally being our legally adopted son.

I'd be whole right now instead of crying fresh tears while I write this.

So what happened?

It's like this. We were trying to help Isaac's dad in a tough situation, and ended up enabling him. The last weekend Isaac stayed with us, it was going to be for Friday night only. His father had adjusted his work schedule so he could pick Isaac up Saturday afternoon and spend the rest of the weekend with him. At the last minute, he decided he'd rather have Isaac stay with us until Sunday afternoon so he could celebrate his birthday with friends. It looked to us like Isaac's father was trying to pass his responsibilities as a father off onto us, and we couldn't be party to that.

It's like this. We wanted to help Isaac, but we had different expectations for his behavior from what his father had. We expected him to stay at the table during meals, to sleep when it was bedtime, to listen to directions and to do things for himself when he could. Whatever he was expected to do at home didn't match what we expected, and it was making him frustrated and us.

It's like this. I already had had my heart ripped out of me that October morning when he left, and so did Evangeline. At first it seemed like the weekend visits were a godsend; instead, they were becoming increasingly stressful, difficult and painful for us as we said goodbye each time, and as the challenges of his behavior were compounded with the needs of Rachel, who was only a few months old.

And it's like this. As bad as it was for me, it was far worse for my wife. God gave me a tremendous measure of grace for dealing with Isaac and his problems, but for whatever reason, it was too stressful for her to deal with, especially added to the stress of dealing with difficult child welfare workers, Isaac's parents, and the pain of seeing what all this was doing to me and to Evangeline. The last few months that Isaac was with us were an iron cage around her spirit. She was trapped in the dark and the cold, and felt utterly alone.

What kind of a husband would I be if I asked her to put herself through that again, with no idea of when or if it would end? She already had done more than anyone had the right to ask or expect of her. So our relationship with Isaac's father ended quietly and unceremoniously, and for the past three years I've had to comfort myself and Evangeline with tears, memories and the hope of a happy reunion some day, years from now.

I don't know what I should say at this point. I could say that life is unfair, and it is. If life were just, either Isaac would be with us and we would be happy; or better yet, his parents would have been the parents he needed from the start so that he never would have needed to live with us in the first place.

I suppose I should say that God is good, because he is. The pain I have had these past few years is real and it runs deep. Nothing else has ever cut me as deeply. Through it all I see the hand of a Father whose tears are deeper and more bitter than mine, and I see the wounds of a Lord who knows this grief and has borne it more fully than I could ever bear, not just for my sake but for Isaac's as well.

But let me also say this: In our hearts, Isaac is my son, and he is Evangeline's brother. There was never a chance that he would live with us, but we will never forget him. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends.

Wrapping up the school year with a movie project

Evangeline had her big motion picture debut today with her final research project for the school year.

For her project this time around, Evangeline decided she wanted to research movies. I never need to encourage her much to try new things, and since everyone else does the poster presentations (and since she already did one poster, and a written paper), I turned her this time onto the idea of making a movie that she could show to explain how movies are made.

We started the work back in April, actually, with a few phone calls that finally led to Evangeline videotaping an interview in early May with a close personal friend of mine named Tim who makes movies from man-in-the-street interviews for his church.

She also interviewed her little sister, who reciprocated and interviewed Evangeline herself, about why she enjoys movies, and what her favorite movies are. She also read two books about making movies, and to cap it all off, we made a stop-motion animation movie using our refrigerator magnets.

When we finished that stage, Evangeline had 25 minutes' worth of footage on our video camera.

About a week ago, Tim came over and loaded the entire video onto his laptop computer, and we began the painstaking process of editing the movie into its final format. That began with the setup, where we deleted clips from the girls' interviews with one another to get rid of extra silence and repeated sentences, rearranging the remaining clips so that everything flowed nicely, and adding the opening credits.

The actual movie went pretty smoothly. Tim was a great interview, and gave Evangeline all sorts of useful information about how he makes his movies, from describing the filming and editing process, to showing her how he could add special effects, and even videotaping her videotaping him.

We cut a few snippets out here and there -- Tim let slip the seven-letter W/M word, for example -- and Evangeline had a hard time keeping the camera focused on him, so we got rid of some footage of the floor and his lap -- but by and large this went nicely.

The third and final section began with Evangeline's description of how we made the animation movie -- including the bit that it took us close to 25 minutes to make a 25-second clip -- followed by the animation itself.

Bridging the sections were black screens with section names, dubbed over with music -- Tim also added some sound effects to the animation, which included a Toys for Tots train accident, and a snake made of several of our magnets -- and closing it all out were some end credits to all those involved in the movie, including the composers whose music we used, and that was that.

Because of the nature of the work, Evangeline didn't personally do the same percentage of the work on this project as she did on the others, but she still was involved in the entire process.

Tim let her delete individual clips under his supervision, she conducted the entire interview, and we followed her direction on each stage of the editing process, although we always provided guidance and recommendations. All told, it was still a heady learning experience for her.

She was feeling pretty good about the whole thing, and on Wednesday it paid off. After the school installed Apple Quicktime for Windows on a PC in her classroom, she showed her presentation to the class, answered a few questions from the students, and was still riding high at the end of the day.

I'm getting a DVD copy for ourselves, and probably for grandparents as well. If I ever feel like it when I have access to a high-speed connection, I may even put the video up on the Internet for others to watch if they feel so inclined.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Copyright © 2006 by David Learn. Used with permission.

fresh strawberies ... yeechh

Never let it be said that I don't do things for my wife and children that I don't personally enjoy.

 

Strawberries, for instance. I don't know, but I've never liked them. Can't stand them, really. Still, Natasha and the girls love them and love to eat them. We buy them constantly at the supermarket, usually when they're on sale but often when they're not.

 

Well, last year I bought two strawberry plants and put them in our garden out front. Over the course of the summer, the plants multiplied and spread and assumed control of about half the admittedly small garden. Once strawberry season hit this year, the plants began churning out the fruits at a steady clip. Every day for the past week-and-a-half, I've gone out in the morning and picked off a half-dozen or more strawberries for the three of them to split.

 

Yesterday, Evangeline gave me the highest compliment a home gardener can
get from his child. She said: "These are even better than the strawberries we buy at the store!"

 

She gets it. She really gets it. Home-grown produce is the best sort. Even if -- and I absolutely mean this -- even if it's not the sort of produce you like to eat yourself.

out of the sewer

Three hundred dollars later, here we are. The line is working again, and we have a better picture of what goes on in our sewers.

 

Proper drainage requires a healthy slope so all the slude we trudge can sludge downhill. Unfortunately, when the sewer line begins in the basement, it's already starting pretty low. And since the sewer main out in the street is also underground, the slope from basement to sewer main is not exactly substantial.

 

Additionally, liquid flowing downhill picks up speed as it moves from a larger pipe to a smaller one. That's a pretty basic hydraulic principle that is true in the inverse -- the pressure and speed drop as the liquid flows from a smaller pipe into a larger one. Our pipe has a low slope, and out near the sewer main, it widens into a pipe about the same size as the main itself. Ergo, when the sewage arrives at the main, it has little pressure going for it, and easily builds up.

 

Righting this problem would require relaying the pipe to create a better slope, and installing a several hundred dollar pump to get the water from our washing machine to flow uphill and into the pipe. We're talking several thousands of dollars by the time it's all said and done.

 

So, instead, the plumber needs to use some 90 feet of coil to work everything free, and we're stuck paying some $200 or $300 every time we need him to come out.

 

I feel better knowing all this, don't you?

life in the sewer

Continuing a longstanding tradition, we have called the plumber once again to clear our sewer line. For reasons that remain unclear, this line keeps clogging and sewage backs up into our laundry tubs in the basement. We have dealt with this every year since we moved into the house, making this the first summer where it has become a problem.

 

Quite frankly, I'm sick of this crap. We've tried organic techniques, like waste-eating bacteria; we've tried mechanical techniques, like using a rubber bladder attached to the hose to give the sewer an enema and blast everything loose.

 

Nothing works.

 

I was going to fill this entry with tons of synonyms for the brown stuff, but I don't feel like it. I'm sick of this shit.

Humpty Dumpty, and other nursery rhymes, reconsidered

I was cleaning out my hard drive, when I found this file. I don't remember writing it, so I'm not sure how it got on my hard drive since I don't remember getting it my e-mail either, and it's in Word format too. Still, if I did write it -- and it's possible I did, I suppose -- I can't say I think much of the worldview it expresses.

The top of the wall was in sight now; just a little further, and he would be free. What a shock it had been that morning, when he had discovered the fate that awaited him and all his relatives. How he had argued with them, fought to convince them to join him in this desperate bid for freedom.

"I can't see what your problem is," his sister had told him. "It's our fate; it's what we're born to."

"But there's so much more to life," he had pleaded. "Don't you see? We don't have to end like this. We can become so much more."

"Get off it, buddy," someone else had said. "It's not that bad. At least you'll make someone happy when you go."

Not me, he thought resolutely. No one, not even the king himself, is going to make an omelette out of Humpty Dumpty.

The top of the wall was in reach now. With a mighty lift, Humpty Dumpty pulled himself up. In the forest outside the palace there were chickens still undomesticated. One of them would take him in, hatch him, and raise him up so he could explore his full potential. He was going to make it. He sat down to catch his breath, and inadvertently sent a few pebbles falling down into the keep.

A mounted guard heard the noise and called out to him. "Stop! In the name of the king, who goes there?"

Humpty looked down at the guards who were gathering in response to the sentry's challenge and looked wistfully out at the life he had nearly found.

"It is I, Humpty Dumpty, a true egg and no breakfast to any man!" he cried, and with a mighty lunge, he threw himself to the ground in front of the guard's mount, where he fractured his shell and spattered yolk everywhere.

Still, I shared this piece with two friends of mine, Aaron and David. Our ensuing discussion follows, duly color coded:

Mr. Dumpty preferred either liberty or death to bondage.  I personally find
it an admirable stance.

It's a rather bleak message, I think. "Accept the fate others have decreed for you, or perish." And he wasn't slated for slavery anyway -- just breakfast. As it is, the ants got him.

Oh, well, in that case, never mind...  =P
Wellll, since we're on the topic:
1. What was little Bo Peep doing that she managed to lose a whole flock of bleating sheep?
2. Why was little Boy Blue tooting his own horn? (See #1)
3. What was nimble and quick Jack running away from, and why was there a candlestick in his way, and why didn't he just go around?
4. How did the three blind mice know where the clock was, and how did they pull off an "Everest-climbing" feat by touch alone, without guide ropes or picks to aid them?
5. If woodchucks can't chuck wood, why do we care how many of them could do it?
6. Why are pecks of pickled peppers growing to be picked? Doesn't Peter have to pickle them himself?
7. How cold were the farmer's hands that the cow was able to jump the whole way over the moon?
8. Why was the itsy bitsy spider climbing a spout? What's at the top of the spout worth going to see -- unless this was "Amazing Spider WaterSlide Park?"
9. Studying the forensics of this crime, did Jill push Jack down the hill and then slip herself, resulting in their early demises, or were they both just complete klutzes?
10. Why did the old woman choose to live in a shoe, instead of a condominium? How did she manage to fit in a shoe? Was it a platform pump or a sling-back heel, or maybe a combat boot? And why did she have so many kids, especially if she didn't know what to do with them, and where was Mr. Old Woman -- had he left her for Goldilocks?
11. Why was Jack Horner sitting in a corner to eat his pie (was he in trouble? Or did he sneak off with it?), and why did he call himself good if he was nothing but a common thief? And who the heck puts plums in their pies anymore?
12. If you recognize the twinkles to be stars, why the hell are you wondering what they are? Don't you already know? (They're STARS, stupid!)
These are challenging questions, and I don't expect you to have answers for all of them.

scriptural authority

Over at www.togetherforthegospel.org, a number of scholars and clergy are presenting a document meant to draw a line in the side on the nature of the gospel. Given the growing lack of biblical literacy in Western churches, and the corresponding growth of Scriptural abuse and false teaching in churches, that's probably not a bad idea.

They make this statement on the Bible qua Word of God:

We affirm that the sole authority for the Church is the Bible, verbally inspired, inerrant, infallible, and totally sufficient and trustworthy. We deny that the Bible is a mere witness to the divine revelation, or that any portion of Scripture is marked by error or the effects of human sinfulness.

Now you know, that's a fairly straightforward statement, and it's hard to disagree with it from a faith perspective, but I think it's important to add the qualifier "within authorial intent." Why? I suppose because I've known my share of pastors and lay Christians to insist on a literal understanding of the Bible, to say that it is accurate in every detail, utterly authoritative in matters of history and science, and so on. I consider that a mistake.

The Bible is what it is -- a collection of divinely inspired writings that relate the transcendent glory and majesty of God, that reveal his desire for the nations, and that recount his plan of salvation. It includes some beautiful poetry, bewildering apocalyptic symbolism, deep wisdom, excoriating prophetic invective, fascinating histories, and above all, deeply moving stories. Those who want nothing to do with the Bible because of their experiences with the church are missing a monumental collection of literature.

But while it's invaluable for history and literature, to insist that it is the last word on history or science is to ascribe a 20th-century modernist attitude to its authors. Given that the ancient Hebrews didn't take its stories literally, and given that the accounts often differ in the order of events, provide conflicting details within parallel passages, and -- in the case of Deuteronomy and Exodus -- can't even always agree on how to perform the same sacrifice, I think we often are guilty of forcing Scripture to be something that it is not.

It is all the things that Peter said it is in his epistle -- God-breathed, inspired and useful for many purposes. Reading through it and experiencing the turmoil and tumult of its stories, the beauty of its poetry and the brilliance of its wisdom -- and most of all, encountering the God revealed within its pages -- is a radically life-changing experience.

the da vinci code

Chances are pretty good that you've heard of a new arrival at the box office called "The Da Vinci Code."

Based on the novel of the same name by Dan Brown, the movie follows a cryptologist as he investigated a murder and discovers that the Church has suppressed the truth about Jesus (gasp!), including his marriage to Mary Magdalene and his descendants, who still live among us today. Not surprisingly, there are two loud voices from the church on this movie: one that screams "Blasphemy!" and the other that says, "My goodness, this is a God-sent opportunity to reach the lost!"

It's probably obvious that I wish the Easily Offended Minions of Orthodoxy would get a grip and be quiet for a change. But let me add that I find the second group fairly annoying too.

Why? Because I am so freaking tired of the church acting as though the latest trendy movie, book or other gimmick is the magic bullet that will bring everyone to Christ. This year it's the "Da Vinci Code." Last year it was "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." Two years ago, it was "The Passion of the Christ." Now here we are, three movies, the Prayer of Jabez, WWJD bracelets and God Only Knows what else later, and the church is still missing the point and failing radically to engage the culture.

If we want to engage the culture and the people who live in it, we need to forget the Fad du Jour and start showing the gospel's relevance to things that actually matter to people, rather than to things that tickle their fancy for an hour or two.

To wit: What relevance does Christ have to a family with gainful employment and no drug addictions, but still has trouble putting food on the table and paying the rent? What matters the gospel to a nation with zero savings, skyrocketing fuel costs and an economic bubble sure to break in the next ten years? What point in believing in Jesus when people are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, when leaders jockey for power without regard for anything more than political convenience, and when all the major religious leaders can do is to moralize and blame homosexuals and abortionists for the state of the nation?

It's a sad day for us all if we're looking to "The Da Vinci Code" to give us opportunities to share the reasons for the hope that we have.

slices of grace

My daughter met two girls at the park today, named Destiny and Nicole. This is important, so that's why I'm writing it down.

It's important, because Destiny and Nicole weren't the children we had hoped to meet. We had a play date today with several friends of my daughter's from preschool, and none of them showed. Not one. Not her best friend, not the boy who always has to have his way, not the shy girl, and not even the boy whose mother was so excited about the idea that she practically cried.

Read the rest of the essay

The greatest tragedy of Thomas Jefferson

A friend of mine, having watched a documentary on Thomas Jefferson, contributed to a recent discussion on the nature of suffering that Jefferson once said, "The art of life is the art of avoiding pain."

This goes right along with protecting our hearts by disconnecting from the world. It seems that is exactly what Jefferson did. He lost his best friend, both his parents, five out of six children, and his wife during his lifetime. Then at a certain point, he fell in love again, but the woman was married. At that point, he wrote a conversation piece between his mind and his heart. That is where the above quote comes from. He decided to live in his "head" for the rest of his life, instead of his heart.

If so, that was Jefferson's deepest tragedy.

As much as life hurts -- and no mistaking it does, the longer you live, the more meaningless suffering you see -- it is infinitely preferable to simply existing. The only true joys of life come from being with other people.

A life spent alone is a life squandered, a lifetime of opportunities wasted.

kiddie-isms

Children have a way with words that is all their own. I don't mean that they possess a unique eloquence, although that often is the case. What I mean is that they are an engine that drives the creation of new words, both in terms of the new vocabulary we must conjure to describe the phenomena that manifest in their presence, and in terms of the neologisms they create. And there's also the words they mangle.

Back when I was a child and station wagons were all the minivan of the day, we had the back seat and the "back back," where we stowed our luggage, our coats and even ourselves, when the back seat was too crowded for four boys. For a couple years, when Ward and I were really young, our oldest brother was PJ, as B.G., his initials, was too difficult for us to say.

Our children have been full of such contributions to the language. Over the years, Evangeline has created terms like "ots" for house; employed the universal prefix yeah, as in yeah-tree, yeah-car and year-house; and vested words with new meaning like when she expressed her desire for milk by saying "computer lights," since she often nursed in the afternoon while Natasha used the computer.

She also renamed the front room of our house the "rivelling room." I admit that I rather like the sound of it, and hope it sticks.

For her part, Rachel has had a fixation on the letter K. Thus she puts on kajamas before she goes to bed, likes to get kabloons when we go to parties, and enjoys seeing korillas at the zoo.

She's also been most inventive with language at expressing new concepts. Although she didn't coin a phrase like "choo-choo bird" to relate the concept of an airplane, she has invented phrases like "tippy bottom," for the opposite of "tippy-top."

Is there a point to all this? No. But it amuses me, and so I share it with you.

suffering

I know of four primary responses Christians have to suffering, only one of which I consider truly biblical.

The first is the classic error that suffering is caused solely by sin or a lack of faith. This is the outlook that ignores the book of Job and makes the dubious claim that following Christ guarantees us health, happiness, prosperity and a generally suffering-free life. It's poppycock, if for no other reason than Jesus warned that suffering and persecution would be the lot of those who followed him, and that's pretty much what his followers all got. What's really bad is the implication that if you suffer or fail to achieve that maximized life, it's your fault for being disobedient to God or failing to have faith. Ick.

The second error I've seen a lot of us is that fatalist approach; i.e., "everything happens for a reason." I guess this is better than the first response described above, since at least people have a stoic approach to suffering and believe that God is working in it. Unfortunately, it makes God the architect of things like the Armenian genocide, the two world wars, the Union Carbide disaster in India twenty-odd years ago, and so on. It also ignores the wisdom of the Preacher, who wrote of many of the injustices of life, "This too is meaningless." Not to mention I've seen this philosophy lead to some pretty callous responses to pain, such as "I think God let this happen to bring revival to our church."

The third error, and this is (I think) a fairly recent one, is flat-out denial. Not in the sense of the Christian Science mind-over-suffering doctrine, but more of taking Paul's advice too far to "consider it great joy when you suffer trials of many kinds, dear brethren." Under this approach, parents are forbidden to grieve for lost children, spouses to mourn their deceased loved ones, and so on, because this indicates a lack of faith and a failure to rejoice in all that God has given us. Funerals become celebrations of resurrection, where any lamentation is considered out of place and faithless, rather than an honest expression of grief.

The understanding I have reached is that pain brings us closer to Christ, no matter what the cause or nature of the pain, and that there is nothing wrong with honestly saying it hurts. When we suffer for our sin, we share in the suffering of Christ, who also suffered for our sins, and in greater part than we do. When we suffer for his sake, then we share in his sufferings, because the Cross also is the supreme example of suffering for love and righteousness. (More than that, if we share in his suffering, the Bible also says we shall share in his triumph.) And when we suffer just because this crazy fallen world is a valley of tears, we still can know him as Immanuel, God with us, because the redemption of this whole sorry world, not just our "souls," is why Jesus went to the Cross. In all our suffering, no matter what the reason, we have the opportunity to commune with him.

The other thing is that the Cross redefines all our lives, the good and the bad, in the light of God's love. Everything before Christ pointed to his coming and his Good Friday/Easter one-two knockout punch; everything since is understood in light of it. That means that all creation, from beginning to end, is an expression of God's love, including the parts that really stink. It's an unfathomable love, and it's hard to explain properly in a comment on someone else's blog, but God's love is a swiftly moving mountain stream that you can really only experience in its fullness by diving in and letting it carry you wherever it goes.

the pain of gardening

I feel sore all over today. My shoulder aches, my wrist hurts, and even my arm has had better days. My leg is stiff and my back would like to kill me.

I am sore, but it's a good sore.

Yesterday, the girls and I spent a few hours at a garden plot we rent for $15 dollar a year. With the girls' help, over the last two days, I have turned the soil in about half a 20-by-20 plot, dug trenches and piled a hill, gives eleven tomato and three zucchini plants their new homes, and sowed four half-rows of corn.

And when I say that I did this with the girls' help, I am not exaggerating. They didn't do any of the spading, obviously, but they did pitch in at an age-appropriate level. When I pulled weeds out from the soil, they both ran the roots back to the compost pile, and they also disposed of the old sunflower stalks.

And let's not forget their eagerness to help plant the plants we already started. I honestly had to make them take turns digging holes by hand for the zucchini. I'm hoping that this translates into a desire for zucchini later in the summer, or at least into a willingness to eat it.

They've been just as involved in the gardening at home, where a sizeable portion of the yard has been converted to one flower bed after another. This is especially true of the front yard, where I have no fewer than six flower beds, although I'll concede that three of them have run together into one giant spread of color.

Directly in front of the house, running from the stoop on the right to the driveway on the left , is the first bed. This one has an azalea and rhododendron, two peonies, a hibiscus, three ferns, a mass or two of daffodils, and a handful of annuals that this year are sunflowers that Ruthie planted.

On the opposite side of the stoop, running down to the sidewalk, is a gardening bed where I grow my lettuce and some broccoli for easy picking, a strawberry patch that has a few dozen flowers, and a few wildflowers. Evangeline had such a fun time planting annuals with me on Saturday that I let her plant six impatiens of her very own in the back, directly by the stoop.

Next to the sidewalk, one touching the driveway and the other touching the walkway to the stoop, are two triangular beds where I grow daffodils, irises and hyacinths. The flowers on these have died back now, but the area is blanketed with a cover of myrtle.

And smack in the middle of the yard is a raised bed where I grow some mums and whatever annuals we happen to fancy that particular year. This year, the girls chose petunias with three different flower colors and some impatiens. The girls and I spent a nice chunk of last week digging holes all around the front yard for these flowers, and we still have a few other annuals and perennials to find homes for.

I'm telling you, this has been a great springtime for me, and for them. I'm enjoying spending the time with them, and they're not only catching my passion for organic gardening, they're developing a sense of pride and ownership in what we produce. That also will give them a greater appreciation of the environment and a greater connection to the ebb and flow of the seasons and how that affects us.

I feel sore all over today from the work, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.

poetry reading

Today I spent around 25 minutes at Evangeline's school, reading poetry to seventh- and eighth-graders, as a belated contribution to Read Across America.

If this sounds like a peculiar form of punishment, where both the adult and the children suffer -- the students in hearing poetry, and myself in trying to get them develop an appreciation for it -- I can assure you that it was nothing like that. When I finished the students were more than merely politice in expressing their appreciation. One of them actually came up and asked me the name of a poet whose work I had mentioned but hadn't read.

The trick is all in the approach.

So knowing that most middle-schoolers hate poetry, I started out by talking with them about how awful the stuff is, and assuring them that their teachers make them read it solely because they had to suffer it through themselves back when they were in school, and everyone knows teachers enjoy sharing the pain and misery they endured with their own students. What with the unusual language and sentence structure; the fixation on boring subjects like sunrises, flowers and love; and the glassy-eyed manner it's taught in, poetry is pretty boring -- and that's without evening considering that 99 percent of all poetry is crap.

So then, after we had established that I understand and largely agree with their sentiments on poetry, I asked them what they would think of someone who writes about death, going insane, and being buried alive. Naturally, they were hooked, and listened in rapt attention to Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven." Several of the students even chimed in on the word "Nevermore," which the raven keeps repeating.

After I finished that one, one of the students asked me if there were any poems about war. So I told him about "The Charge of the Light Brigade," some of the poems that emerged from the trenches of World War I, and suggested he do a Google search on poetry and war.

Next I read Robert Frost's "The Road not Taken," and we had a short discussion about the poem and its meaning on the choices we make. After that I suggested that the boys, who were at the age of taking an interest in girls, should try reading some love poetry to girls in an attempt to win their hearts. ("Absolutely guaranteed to work," I said.) And then I told the girls that if they wanted to get rid of a boy, they should read some of the dramatic poetry of William Shakespeare, particular the lines of Beatrice in "Much Ado About Nothing," since the insults there are enough to get rid of anyone.

I also suggested that if the girls wanted a good laugh at the boys' experience, they should get the boys to read Emily Dickinson. A good number of adolescent boys get their first crush on Dickinson, even though she's been dead 150 years or so.

For the last poem, I gave them a choice of T.S. Eliott's "The Hollow Men" or a poem about the end of the world. Naturally, they all thought a poem about the end of the world was a good idea, so I read Frost's "Fire and Ice."

My closing remarks were the clincher for at least one reader. I suggested that if they wanted to read a real freaky poem about dead men coming back to life and sailing a ship, and about waking nightmares placing bets on a man's soul, then they should read Samuel Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." One of the boys came up afterward and wanted to know more about it, so I think he's intrigued. Who knows?

So, chalk one up for the poets. When I started out the reading, the kids all agreed that they hated poetry. At worst, I didn't turn anyone off to poetry who had an interest. It looks instead like I might have got a child or two interested.

The troop held its investiture ceremony

Evangeline officially became a Daisy Scout today.

Daisy Troop 112 started meeting about six weeks ago at the charter school Evangeline attends. Today, at the troop's third meeting, we held the investiture ceremony for the girls to recite the Girl Scout Promise for the first time, and receive their Daisy pins.

It was a nice experience for the girls, although I was disappointed at the low turnout: Of the nine girls who enrolled, only four showed up, and one of them was a half-hour late.

The meeting ran smoothly enough. Evangeline suggested a song to add to the startup ritual, and I came up with one for the end, and in-between we had the investiture ceremony and played a game to teach the girls the Spanish words for their body parts.

We're starting to get the hang of it, and we're planning a few activities for the next few months, including into the summer, when the girls will be Brownies.

Rachel enjoys the meetings too, and obviously thinks of herself as a Daisy Scout. We let her think so; really, I think we encourage it, since she takes part in all the activities and even got a Daisy pin today.

Potential upcoming activities include tours of the library, the Police Department, Mayor's Office, a local McDonald's and a visit to a nature preserve this July.

No trips to Savannah in the pipeline yet, although I understand every Girl Scout is required to make that pilgrimage at least once.

after the meeting

After the meeting, I feel like my head will explode.

 

The change is not quite sudden, but it is dramatic. During the meeting, I'm all energy. I'm cracking jokes, engaging a small troop of Daisy Scouts, riffing off what they say, reminding them to take care of their Daisy badges and not treat them like cheap costume jewelry, and bearing their disruptive silliness with good grace. I'm in my zone and feeling heat. It's a good, euphoric place to be.

 

The meeting ends at 5:15 p.m. The last Scout not directly related to the troop leaders has gone, and now we're bustling our own children to the cars and getting ready to go. We're off to the supermarket. It's time for a quick jaunt through the aisles to get what we need for dinner, preferably ready made and healthy. Corn on the cob. Roast chicken. For tomorrow, a yellow squash, zucchini and some pasta.

 

By the time we get home, the girls' chatter has gone from entertaining to grating, but they haven't changed. My skin crawls at their antics, and my spirit groans at the attitude I see myself harboring. I manage -- barely -- to avoid telling them to watch a video while I get dinner ready, but I still get snippy and surly with them over their attempts to be funny, to ask me questions, to be involved.

 

What happened to the wild and crazy Scout leader who was there an hour ago? Is there something wrong with the stuff I've been eating lately? There has been an awful lot of sugar, is that throwing off my moods? Am I facing depression? Am I tired? Stressed? Pressured?

 

It isn't right. The girls deserve better than this.

i'm back

After about two months of limited e-mail access, it looks like I'm back in the game.

 

Back in March, I started having trouble sending e-mail. I could receive it all right, but sending it kept generating an error. I figured at first that it was a technical glitch and would go away in time. It didn't, and about a week ago, even webmail stopped working. I began to suspect a virus was to blame.

 

Lo and behold, it now appears that the perfidy keeping me from full e-mail access is nothing more than increased security at the university regarding who uses their Internet servers. Natasha, who gets us free dial-up Internet access through her job at the university, had got an e-mail about back when the problem started but didn't see the relevance, since she does most of her e-mail at work. She only put the pieces together a couple days ago, when I remarked in some detail about the frustrations of not being able to use e-mail any more. (Yes, it really can take a while for something to aggravate me substantially, especially when my daily life doesn't depend on it.)

 

So today Natasha sent me the e-mail, which contains information on how to update the security stuff in Outlook Express. I read it, made a few changes, and voila, I'm back in the game.

 

This explains why my blog updates have been so few and far between of late. I prefer to update via e-mail, a much faster and easier method than the WYSIWYG interface.

five more minutes

The family vineyards always bear true crops.

 

I went to wake Rachel this morning because we have to go somewhere, and we need her to adjust to earlier wake-up times anyway, so that she goes to bed a little earlier. I pulled off her covers, gave her a light tickle and told her it was time to get up.

 

She groaned, much as I do when it's time to get up, and said, "I'm still sleepy!" Yesterday she asked for five more minutes, and then got up. Today, she just ran back to bed once I put her down, and pulled the blankets back over herself.

 

I love my kids.

back seat parenting

I took the back seat this morning at Evangeline's school, and it was a great feeling.

 

When I drop Evangeline off at her school in the morning, it's my custom to walk her all the way into her class. It's not needed, strictly speaking, and a lot of parents don't do it, but as long as she doesn't mind, I intend to keep doing it. It's a reminder to her of how much I love her, she sometimes neds the added reminder a parent brings to take her things into class, and it's also an added safety feature, albeit not a deeply necessary one.

 

(The other kids in Evangeline's class also seem to enjoy seeing me. Several of them address me by name, show me their homework, or share other bits of news with me. They see me a lot when I volunteer at the school, and I think they enjoy the attention I give them.)

 

Today we arrived at school at the same time as one of Evangeline's classmates, a girl who also was at Daisy Scouts yesterday. Jocelyn and Evangeline walked in together, chatting animatedly about Scouts and other things, and I contented myself to walk a few steps behind them.

 

It was a glorious, heady feeling, seeing her connecting with a friend like this. It was a visible reminder that Evangeline is growing up and our relationship is growing into a new stage -- and has been all year, actually.

 

This sense of letting go and being let go, it's a long-term process, but it's what parenting is all about, isn't it?

 

She's off to a healthy start.

Our inaugural Girl Scout troop meeting

Today was my first-ever meeting troop meeting with Evangeline and her fellow Daisy Scouts.

It was a good experience, although we will do better next time, now that we're better acquainted with how the meeting is likely to flow. The main thing we'll need is to have more hands-on activities fully planned and ready to go, especially given the propensity of one or two of the girls to go all-out silly and rambunctious.

We have nine members registered, although another two girls expressed interest today and only six of our nine registrants actually appeared today.

We kept it simple, introducing the girls to the Girl Scout Law, the Girl Scout sign, taking a few minutes to get to know one another, and then engaging in some games to get the blood flowing and help them to loosen up.

I was surprised how many of the girls had trouble making the sign. It's a fairly simple thing — just extend the middle three fingers of the right hand upward, while holding down the pinky with your thumb — but it was still a challenge for about half the girls. I actually had to help one girl get her fingers into position so she could do it.

Everyone was pretty quiet and serious at the start of the meeting, mostly I think because they didn't quite know what to expect and some of them probably didn't know one another, since the troop is open to all five of the school's lower classrooms.

We're going to have an investiture ceremony in four weeks, at the Girl Scout center, provided we can get the space reserved. That's when we'll formally present the girls with their uniforms, and let them read the Girl Scout Pledge for the first time.

All told, the meeting went well, even if I did make a fool of myself playing Duck, Duck, Goose with the kids. I'm going to put a little more effort into planning the next meeting — we had been told to shoot for 45 minutes, but the troop leader found out during training that an hour is supposed to be the actual length — such as getting some arts and crafts projects to do, and we're going to see about having the girls start out as Brownies, since they're supposed to become Brownies next school year any way, and that's only a few months away.

true colors revealed

Now at last, everyone can see the true colors of Elmo. (It reminds me of the time that G.I. Joe complained that math class was tough, and Barbie growled, "Eat lead, Cobra!")

 

I must admit that Elmo is beginning to look positively saintly next to Dora la Exploradora. Rachel has discovered the mindless wonders of Dora through some DVDs we borrowed from the library, and recently discovered a Dora Christmas story book that takes estupido to a whole new level.

 

It's getting to the point I'd like to shove the little chica (Dora, that is, never Rachel) into her backpack, zip it shut, and toss it in the river. They could drag me before the magistrate, and I'd confess joyfully the whole way, "I did it! I did it!"

 

No jury would ever convict me of wrongdoing.

immigration

Is it just me, or do other people find this quote, attributed to former President Theodore Roosevelt, troubling?

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

The context I'm referring to it in is an e-mail that's been making the rounds recently, presumably in response to the recent debate over immigration and how the United States should respond to the large numbers of illegal immigrants in the country. Some people favor an amnesty that would give them all at least temporary amnesty, while others are favoring deportation and more stringent efforts to stop illegal immigration, such as erecting a twelve-foot fence along the U.S.-Mexico border.

 

Back in the 1990s, when California was discussing Proposition 42 or whatever it was, about providing education and other things for the illegal immigrant population, I heard a lot about all the Mexicans coming into the country, ruining our culture, refusing to speak our language, and taking away jobs from Americans.

 

I think a lot of those same sentiments are driving the recent anti-immigration push; i.e., the idea that letting too many Hispanics in is going to dilute something essentially American about our nation and turn it into something else. Hence the call for a fence. (I can't help but wonder if that means they consider Mexicans to be vermin like the rabbits in Australia, or if they see themselves as safeguarding our way of life like the Soviets did when they erected the Berlin Wall.)

 

The truth is that immigrants � both legal and illegal � in America have done a lot to enrich our society. They bring a strong sense of industry, not only to succeed themselves but to build a better life for their children and to support their families back home; they enrich our culture with elements of their own, such as Cinco de Mayo, soccer and the Spanish language, in the case of Mexican immigrants; and they do a lot to keep some industries moving, such as agriculture and construction, since they're willing (or forced, through circumstance) to work for less than citizens and legal immigrants.

 

And as many have pointed out, it's not like it really is all that easy to enter the country through proper legal channels. When a situation is a desperate one, it's not surprising that many people have chosen desperate solutions like trying to cross the desert and find employment.

 

None of which means we should turn a blind eye toward illegal immigration, which can cause problems for our country as we assume responsibility for the health and well-being of people we don't even know are here, costs hundreds or thousands of lives annually in failed or misguided attempts to sneak across the border, and so on.

 

There has to be a middle ground we can find. Non-U.S. citizens receive automatic citizenship after they serve in the armed forces; surely we can recognize the contributions people have made to our nation and society after they have been in our country for several years, gainfully if illegally employed, and at least give them legal residency? Surely we can focus our enforcement efforts on employers who support the illegal immigration industry by paying workers under the table, rather than stripping away the hopes of people who risked their lives to come here in pursuit of a dream that our own ancestors chased hundreds of years ago?

 

And surely we can cut the crap about how they're harming America by coming here?

the artist's clothing line

I have just created a Cafe Press store featuring T-shirts with Evangeline's artwork. So, if you've been curious to see what her artwork looks like, you can go over there and take a gander. Naturally, since I'm new to Cafe Press, I only have two of her drawings up, and one of them is on only one shirt, while the other is on eleven of them. If you want a different product with one of her drawings, let me know, and I'll set it up for you.

 

If there actually proves to be any interest, I'll scan some of her other wearable drawings, and put them in the store as well. If it ever comes to that, I can always add additional stores, right?

 

The occasion for the shirts is the birthday of Evangeline's mother, who is turning 31 this year. Evangeline and I liked the idea of giving her a shirt with one of Evangeline's drawings on it, and CafePress turned out to be cheaper than Yahoo! or Snapfish, which offer similar services.

 

If anyone does buy something, remember that proceeds will go toward Evangeline's college education.

The five things I like most

Having been tagged by a good friend at her LiveJournal blog, I hereby comply with the obligations of the latest "five-things" meme:

Name 5 things you like most (with a brief commentary):

1. My wife's smile. There's something about Natasha's face when she smiles. Maybe it's the way her lip pulls up and stretches across her face, or the way it makes her cheeks stick out just a little. Maybe it's how her eyes light up, the way they shine in the darkness like beacons bringing a ship home after a long, tiring day. When Natasha smiles, something shifts not just in her face, but in the entire room. Fifteen pounds of tension fall from my shoulders, and I feel renewed.

2. Snuggling with my daughters. Today after dinner, Evangeline climbed into my lap and curled up with her head on my chest. I slipped my arms protectively around her back and chest, locked my hands together, and leaned my head down onto her hers while I felt my insides go all gooey. Evangeline's getting bigger, and either won't be able to do this much more, or she'll decide she doesn't want to do it anymore.

Day before yesterday, I woke up to find my younger daughter had climbed into my bed during the night, and had curled up at my side. The sun had come up, and I was awake, but she was so at peace, nestled snugly under my arm, that I didn't want to move.

She's young, and probably has years of snuggles left inside her, but I remember when Evangeline was this small, and I realize that these moments are going to slip through my fingers like sand if I don't treasure them as they come. I must have stayed in bed with her another hour-and-a-half before she woke up -- one of the nicest perks of being a stay-at-home father.

3. Family time. Sometimes it's game night, and sometimes it's eating popcorn and watching a movie like "Men in Black" or "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." Usually it's just having a nice meal together around the table, something we make a point of doing at every meal, and something I hope we continue to make a point of doing at every meal as long as we're a family.

Tonight it was having family devotions after dinner, and watching as the girls throw themselves completely into worship. There is nothing like watching your three-year-old dance with all her enthusiasm while she belts out the lyrics to "Awesome God" at the top of her lungs. These are the memories I will treasure in years to come.

4. Writing. There is no explaining the mystery of disappearing inside a story, a character or a line of thought, and losing all track of time and self as I write. Recently, it's felt like there's been a drought where this has been concerned, but in the last few weeks, things finally have started to give again, and I've been able to lose myself in the rush of words.

People write for different reasons; for me, it's a threefold experience. I reach inward to find the voice that cries out for expression, and sift through my thoughts, experiences and inner processes to discover something about the heart of me; but I also strain upward, to lose all that is false and untrue in myself, and connect with the heart of God, inasmuch as someone like me can hope to understand God's heart.

And in the process of writing, I reach outward to others, real or imagined, and hope that what they read will have meaning and will change them in some of the ways that writing it has had meaning and changed me.

Quite often, I think, I fail; but every once in a while, I read something that I've written, and I know that I nailed it. That handful of news stories, columns, editorials, essays — however the writing is categorized — are worth more than gold to me.

5. Learning. Whether it's discovering some new information, mastering some arcane school of knowledge, or developing new skills, I love to learn. Khomerex ka and khomerex khest, John Ford wrote in "The Final Reflection": the structure that grows, and the structure that dies. There is no other form of existence."

I thrill to understand the inner workings of school districts, municipalities, tax and political systems, even as I grasp their inadequacies and innate corruption; I love perceiving the patterns and beneath-the-surface flow of systems and hierarchies; and I love to learn more about myself.

Lately, I've been teaching myself to play the piano, to draw and to paint. As with writing, I find that learning is an act of worship. After all, what will heaven be, if not a chance to understand God better with each passing day, for as long as eternity lasts?

Game night with the kids

We try every weekend to have one Game Night, when we put aside all the distractions that come and spend an hour or so after dinner to play a game together.

Game nights have all sorts of uses. It's family time, so it builds relationships. It teaches the girls sportswomanship: how to be competitive without being vicious, how to take turns, how to lose and how to win graciously. Depending on the game, it also can build vocabulary and spelling skills, math skills, pattern recognition, deductive reasoning, strategy and critical thinking, and so on.

Tonight's game was Uno, and Rachel was in rare form, demonstrating not only her skill at recognizing patterns -- color on color, or number on number -- but also her color skills. She plays a blue card and says, "Brr! I'm cold!" She plays a yellow card and says, "Oh, I'm hot!" She plays a red card and says, "Oh, I'm warm!"

And she plays a green card and says, "Oh, I'm a leprechaun!"

Still in quarantine from my family

Everybody's back home again, but things aren't quite back to normal yet.

For starters, I'm still something of a pariah, even in my own family. I can talk with them and eat meals with them, but I can't hold my children in my lap, can't snuggle with them over a bedtime story, and can't bury them in that inescapable hug that every father has for his children after they've been away. Arm's length for four days; limited close personal contact for 10 days.

This is the worst part of the cancer treatment, worse even than the final stretch before I could take thyroid hormone again, when I slept 15 hours in a single day and could have slept more.

Patience, I tell myself. All will soon be made right. But in the meantime, it stinks.

The girls had a good time seeing their cousins in New York. I asked Evangeline what her favorite part was, and she said, "My favorite favorite part was playing with them in the park. My favorite part was the whole thing."

My brother fixed the flat tire on Evangeline's bike, and she had a good time riding her bike to the park with her cousins. She didn't even mind that Rachel had inherited her tricycle, although Rachel had a hard time reaching the pedals and pushing them anywhere.

The four cousins apparently had a blast together, all things considered. There were a few bumps and bruises, including one black eye from a bump on the slide, but the amusements far outweighed the downsides.

Megan cried on Friday because Rachel and Evangeline were playing without her -- they weren't really, they're just used to playing together -- but she had a blast having girls around to play with all weekend, and that made a new experience for her.

Ben liked having someone new to play with, and even got into a toy sword fight with Evangeline, which he proceeded to lose when she pressed her advantage and he backed up, and rolled down the hill.

And Megan liked her cousins, but couldn't remember their names, so they became "her" and "her" or "my cousin with the dark hair" and "my cousin with the light hair."

Everyone was wide awake when they returned home Sunday night. I bundled Evangeline off to bed with a story, and woke her up early the next morning so she could take a shower before school -- fortunately, that's a skill she's been learning for a while. Natasha slept until nine o'clock, because Rachel had napped in the car and was wide awake until one that morning, and then she and Rachel rushed to the office so she could complete her payroll duties.

So I sit around the house, still quarantined from my own family, and watch as the shadows grow long, and wait for the safety period to pass so I can fully be with my children and wife again. I've continued to work on the piano and some some art, and tonight I hope to rework a section of the novel.

Everyone's home again. I just wish I could spend time with them.

I think I'm losing it

I think it was around six o'clock this morning that I started to wonder if I was cracking up.

That was around the time the phone in the bedroom rang, and I answered it. It was Sam, and he was calling to find out how I was doing. Pretty thoughtful guy, that Sam. I'm doing all right, I told him. Being alone isn't getting to me in the least. And that was when I realized that I was talking out loud to a person I didn't know, on a phone that doesn't exist, in a room all by myself.

Shit, but I had some weird dreams last night. And now they're calling me up to see how I'm doing?

Reverse influence of children on parents

In our house, sometimes the water flows uphill.

The principles of influence generally apply the way they always have, and you can safely say about the girls, "Oh, she takes after her mother that way" or "She gets that from her father." I take great pride in Evangeline's burgeoning interest in Greek mythology, and there's no doubt that my wife appreciates the relish Rachel has for the outdoors and nature. What parents don't love it when their children emulate them?

But lately, in my own life, I've seen that sometimes the tree doesn't grow too far from where the apple falls. Every once in a while, the water flows uphill.

Evangeline displayed a flair for artistic self-expression as early as 2 years old. Her interest waned for a few months, but particularly after we lost Isaac, she threw herself into drawing with abandon. We enrolled her in courses at a nearby art academy after she turned 5, and she had her own art exhibit there a year later.

What's curious is how this has affected the others of us. I've noticed in the last few weeks that Rachel has started displaying previously unknown levels of interest in art, particularly when it comes to painting. Tuesday night she painted herself a rainbow with an unmistakable bow shape to it, and when she draws, she's paying more attention to detail than ever before. She's spending more time on her art, and getting better every day. She's becoming an artist.

So am I. On Monday I asked the art instructor enough questions about Evangeline's art supplies that she told me I should just start taking lessons myself. I've noticed that my knowledge of different techniques, and my level of effort, have shot well past the stick-figure level where they effectively lingered for twenty-odd years.

In order to jumpstart Evangeline on the cover for her Roald Dahl research project, I drew my own sloppy copy and was reasonably impressed with the results. I'll never show at the Guggenheim or the Museum of Modern Art, but with a little effort and some coaching, I might actually turn out to be half-decent. It's a shocker.

The real shocker, though, has been musically. All the way through high school and college, I heard from my more musically attuned friends that I should give my vocal chords and their ears a rest whenever I felt the urge to sing. I had played the tuba for six years, and had been seated ahead of the all-state honors band player, but the general consensus of my friends was that I would do everyone a favor if I just left music to the musicians.

Generally speaking, I have. Even setting aside the question of vocals, there's not much demand for tubists in any sort of small-band capacity, I don't think I even remember half the valve combinations anymore, and I've always considered the time requirements for learning to play a new instrument to be too unwieldy at this point in my life.

As fate would have it, about two weeks ago, Evangeline started pleading for piano lessons. I had been trying to teach her piano from a music book during kindergarten, with mixed success, since I had no idea how to play it myself, and homeschooling texts are notorious for claiming how easy it is to teach a children a language or knowledge base that you haven't mastered yourself. (Mind, it's not impossible, but it is a lot of work, and it requires humility since you have to learn alongside your child, instead of imparting things from your own experience.)

But Evangeline was persistent, so I asked a friend who plays keyboards for his church if he would be willing to give it a shot. Rob, who is trained in elementary music education, took a different approach from the theory-scales-songs progression I recall from school. It's more like getting the kids to "think musically," and letting everything else follow. Professor Harold Hill may have been a con man with his "76 Trombones" and "Trouble in River City," but I have to say, I like Rob's approach just fine.

He taught Evangeline exactly one note, C natural, and told her to use that as the starting point for any song she wants to sing. After she matches her voice to that note, she then finds the next corresponding note on the keyboard, and then the next, and so on, until she has learned to play the whole song, entirely by ear. She undoubtedly will rearrange the song from its more familiar key in the process, but she's training her ears and fingers to match the notes she plays with what she sings.

Once she has learned to play two or three songs, we're supposed to call Rob for her second lesson. Practice, in the meantime, is at her pace and set by her level of interest, although we encourage her to practice and try to redirect her when she starts wandering off. (Forcing the issue with regimented daily practice times of 30 minutes a piece, I'll attest, leads to resentment, frustration, and not picking up the bloody instrument again once you graduate, so it's safe to consider it counterproductive.)

Rob insisted up front that he would not accept payment of any sort, since he simply enjoys seeing others learn to play, and is not trying to turn her into a concert pianist. That's a lucky thing for us, since Evangeline has already lost most of her interest in the piano, despite her initial enthusiasm.

But if Evangeline has lost interest, I've gained it. I already have figured out how to play some fairly simple children's songs like "Mary had a Little Lamb" and "Twinkle Little Star," which Rachel loves to hear me play; and "Majesty," a praise-and-worship chorus popular in charismatic churches in the late 1980s. I'm now working on "Holy, Holy, Holy," a more complicated and theologically deeper song that has been a church mainstay for ages.

I'm doing a decent job and one day soon may even be able to play our keyboard for our family devotions time, at least for one or two songs. I doubt I'll ever lead worship at church, and I'll certainly never play at Carnegie Hall, but I'm experiencing a renaissance in an area of artistry I never knew I had, and that alone makes it worth the price of admission.

And since both Rachel and Evangeline see my renewed interest and enthusiasm for the piano and drawing, I've a feeling these things will be a part of our family for years to come. If the water continues to run uphill and the trees keep growing near where the apples fall, we're going to have quite a tidy little orchard before long.

masculinism at its finest

Rachel and I spent about two hours at Evangeline's school last Thursday, doing our part to tear down gender-based stereotypes.

Last Thursday of course was the birthday of Dr. Seuss and the official kickoff date for Read Across America, the annual program aimed at getting more students reading books. As someone who has loved to read ever since he was a child, and who loves to read with his own children, it was a given that I was going to volunteer.

My choice of reading material was the usual sort of sedition you would expect from someone who encourages his elder daughter's interest in Spider-man. We read Robert Munsch's "The Paper Bag Princess," a book I love because it turns the whole Disney notion of a princess on its vacuous ear and has the girl not only save the prince from the dragon by her quick thinking, but saves her from marrying a dull and boorish prince.

Of course, this is me we're talking about. Why stop with a little sedition when you can go a lot further?

One of the staple activities of Read Across America is getting the kids to make green eggs and ham, and then somehow convincing them actually to eat them. Since this involves heating a skillet to 350 or 400 degrees and cooking the eggs, it's generally a good idea to have someone around to help, particularly when you have a bunch of kindergartners through second-graders doing the cooking.

As I manned the skillet, I heard one of the boys scoff that cooking is "for girls." It wasn't enough for me just to point out that I'm no girl, nor was it enough for me call another of the boys muchacha (i.e., "girl") when he called me "Old Lady." No, I had to encourage the boys -- each of them, one at a time, as they gave me their eggs to cook -- to remember that they were free to choose their own paths in life.

"Remember," I told them, "there's nothing a girl can do that a boy can't do just as well if he wants to."

One of the sharper girls picked up on the ironic message of empowerment inherent in that and pointed out to one of her friends, but one of the boys wasn't convinced that girls and boys are all that much alike. He pointed out that boys can't like dolls.

"Sure they can," I said. "Don't you like action figures?"

The poor kid froze, his eyes as wide and as helpless as a deer's when it sees a car barreling down on it but it doesn't know where to go. He turned to the teacher for help.

"Miss Zoë!" he called. "Are action figures dolls?"

I saw the wheels turn rapidly in her head as she figured out what was going on. And then, scarcely a beat missed, she said, "Of course they are."

Thus does the revolution continue.

curse of thyroid

And now there are only four days until I receive my radioactive iodine. We have marked this on the calendar with the universal Danger: Radiation symbol, and Natasha has written "Flee to New York" next to it, with a string of exclamation points.

All that remains is for the doctor to mistake radioactive iodine for another radioactive material, like say, uranium, and give me a large enough pill that it proves to be fissile. Failing that, I expect to spend much of Friday and the weekend all alone with hundreds of books, the complete "Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy, and my computer. (Now it may be that my wife expects me to be home alone all weekend with a stack of dirty laundry, messy rooms, a pile of dirty dishes, and a can of paint or two, but I think we can all agree that she doesn't appreciate the serious and potentially life-threatening nature of cancer.)

Today's visit to the hospital was much like yesterday's. The pale green paint remains in place on the equipment, in clear defiance of international law. Homer still manned the controls, but did nothing with my brain, apparently having found nothing when he checked yesterday. I still nearly fell asleep and almost fell off the examining table when they had finished with the gamma camera, and I still needed to be shown the way out of the radiology department.

On the bright side, when I followed a friend's suggestion of looking for patterns in the water stains on the ceiling tiles, like kids do with clouds in the sky, I saw Don Knotts smiling and waving back at me. He reached down from the ceiling, and when he touched me on the throat, I felt a warm, heavenly glow spread across my body.

I don't know how to say this, but I think I've been healed.

Before I close this entry, I just wanted to note that I've heard from some friends that my cancer-related correspondence has left them in an awkward position or two over the last few months. A teacher was undone while administering a test at the thought of a butt-scratching surgeon, a news editor had to explain to her staff what was so funny that she kept laughing for twenty minutes, my brother nearly lost it during a business meeting when he checked his e-mail and read my description of yesterday's checkup, and a college student is disconsolate that she probably will not get to add my hypothetical armpit thyroid to her collection. And as a business editor wrote me, "I hope you get this treatment done and over with soon. You sound like you're having too much fun -- and it's quite annoying."

Personally, all I've been able to glean from the experience myself are some maudlin thoughts about mortality. I'd like to apologize for any difficulty my getting cancer has caused you.

bride of thyroid

And now there are only four days to go.

I just got back from the hospital about thirty minutes ago, following one of those harrowing ordeals you can find only at a medical establishment. In this case, the doctor was barely involved, though; it was the nuclear medicine technician. Kind of sounds like I'm under Homer Simpson's medical care, doesn't it?

Yes, it was the "Stand here and don't move a muscle drill," followed by the "Lie here and don't move a muscle for the next forty minutes" drill. I never knew that holding still could be so draining, but perhaps that's why I always got more exhausted at my desk jobs as a news editor than I did as a reporter on the go, at The Packet.

The first drill involved standing with my throat up against a long metal tube painted the sort of color green that was outlawed in 1950 because of the mental cruelty it inflicted upon hospital patients. This was to measure the exact amounts of radiation being emited by the thyroid tissues left after my Dec. 8 surgery, as some tissues always are left behind. The low-dosage radiation, you no doubt remember, came from the radioactive iodine pill I was given Friday morning.

For the second examination, the technician, whom for simplicity's sake I will call "Homer," had me lie down on a narrow bunk before strapping my arms to my sides and telling me to hold still during the rest of the exam. This was performed with a gamma camera; alas, judging by the number of people wandering in and out of the room, casually eating doughnuts and talking about whatever it is they were talking about, all without the benefits of Hazmat suits or radiation protection, I can only assume that no gamma rays were released during this portion of my exam. I have even less chance of becoming the Incredible Hulk than previously expected. Similarly, my chances of making the evolutionary leap from custodian to supergenius (a trail blazed by Samuel Stern, aka The Leader, one of the Hulk's nemeses in the comics) also are unlikely. I can only assume the gamma camera measured the radiation coming from my neck.

The chief recollection I have from this period, which I believe lasted more than 40 minutes and possibly longer than an hour involved noticing that the ceiling tiles had hideous brown stains. These in turn reminded me of my old job and the fastidious care our employers took of the building to ensure an aesthetically pleasing and mold-free workplace. Such pleasant associations combined with a maddening itch on my chin while my arms were strapped to my side helped to make this a thoroughly pleasant and painless experience. It was rather like being able to visit a 1950s mad scientist lab, from inside the movie. Any moment, I thought, Dr. Frankenstein will send his hunchbacked little assistant in here to remove my brain, and I'll break free and end his reign of terror over the village.

Igor never showed up, but the gamma camera was painted the same hideous green as the telescope-looking metal tube I'd had to stand next to earlier. I'm sure there is a law against that color, there has to be.

After it was all over, Homer released me from the gamma camera, unstrapped my arms and told me I could get up and wait in the waiting room. In truth, I had nearly fallen asleep after closing my eyes to avoid staring directly into the ceiling light, so I almost fell onto the floor. And then I got lost on my way to the waiting room. I'm sure it was only my imagination that led me to hear Homer say, "His brain was too small, master, but look, I found you one that belonged to Abby Normal."

Afterward, the doctor showed me the gamma pictures of my throat and the rest of my body. There was a blackish star-shaped mess where my thyroid used to be, which as noted before, was the remaining thyroid and presumably some cancer tissue. I'll be going back on Friday for the iodine dosage that will destroy the thyroid cells, while my wife and the girls are safely off to visit relatives to avoid incidental radiation.

During that time, I'm supposed to drink a lot of fluids, flush three times whenever I go to the bathroom, and have the option of wearing disposable gloves if I think I'm going to sweat a lot, since sweat and other bodily fluids are how the iodine will be secreted from my body. Sweat seems unlikely this time of year, especially when I'm cold all the time without a thyroid. All the same, I'll wash the bed covers thoroughly before my wife comes home.

And of course, I'm due to return to the hospital tomorrow at the same time for more picture-taking excitement with green equipment.

Betcha this time they concentrate on my brain.

son of thyroid

At this point, I am about five days away from the iodine treatment that is supposed to leave my remaining cancer cells in smoldering, radioactive ruin.

Two days ago, on Friday, I went to the hospital for the initial radioiodine treatment. Despite the lead case and warning label that screamed "DANGER! RADIATION! PROLONGED EXPOSURE MAY CAUSE SICKNESS AND THE GROWTH OF EXTRA LIMBS," the radiation contained in this dose was quite low -- only 2 millicules (sorry, I have no idea how to spell that).

That, however, is supposed to be enough to make whatever thyroid tissue not removed by the surgery, cancer cells included, light up under an X-ray when I get a bioscan on Monday morning. Based on the pictures they take at this appointment, the doctors will give me a more radioactive dose this coming week to destroy what is left, including
any metastasized cancer cells.

If I have been growing a new thyroid in my armpit, as some have hoped, the chances are high indeed that it will not survive the ensuing devastation. (As if anything can long survive in or near my armpit during the summer, anyway.)

This treatment will have the downside of turning me radioactive (cue The Simpsons' "Radioactive Man" theme music) for about four days. My wife and children will be visiting relatives over the weekend, while I wander the house in isolation, even less fit for the company of pregnant women and small children than before. (No, my wife is not pregnant.)

We still must work out the logistics of getting me home from the hospital, since my wife and younger daughter will drop me off there, hen take the car to fetch the elder child from school before leaving the state. It's doubtful I can walk home from the hospital, as living without thyroid hormone the last few weeks -- a prerequisite for this sort of chemotherapy -- has left me weary beyond description, and feeling like roadkill. It has led to some meditations on my own mortality, though.

Much thanks for your support during this period, even if it has been just to wonder who would be tasteless enough actually to blog about having cancer, for long enough to scratch your head in confusion and visit a more interesting site.

'half a life'

I have found a hero in Gotham City, but it's not Batman. It's Renee Montoya.

Montoya has been a detective in the Gotham City Police Department since 1992. The daughter of Dominican immigrants, she works in the department's major crimes unit, where she helps to investigate crimes by Gotham's costumed criminals like the Joker and Mr. Freeze. And she's the central character to "Half a Life," a collection I just read twice after borrowing it from the local library.

I love my library.

"Gotham Central" is part of that relatively new genre of comic books set in the world of superheroes, but with superheroes and their colorful sparring partners used as backdrops rather than as the star attraction. The main story is the human drama of the people who inhabit the same world as the capes.

The art is incredible. For the bulk of "Half a Life," which incorporates relevant single issues from other Batman titles, the art makes good use of light and shadow, smooth lines, rugged lines, and color. It's got a gritty feel to it, which is appropriate, since it's about Gotham City, the seedy underside of DC's urban world.

But good as the art is, it's the story itself is what makes the collection a must-have. It starts out with an issue printed just after "Cataclysm," the Batman-event earthquake that rocked Gotham City in 1999. Montoya is out working with emergency crews trying to locate and rescue quake survivors trapped beneath rubble, and finds herself working with Two-Face.

Two-Face is former District Attorney Harvey Dent, horribly scarred on half his face and given to a pathology that leads him to cede major decisions to the flip of a coin, one side of which is defaced. If the coin comes up heads, he's your friend; if the defaced side comes up, he probably will kill you. Whatever he does do, it won't be pleasant.

Every time someone asks for help, Two-Face flips the coin. To Batman, the risk of the coin landing wrong would be too high, and he would take Two-Face down rather than face that risk. But Montaya is not Batman. She is a cop who finds needs Two-Face to help with the rescue effort. She has one bullet in her gun, and she is prepared to use it, but every time Two-Face flips the coin, it comes up heads and he helps. It's impossible but it keeps happening.

Montoya realizes that she understands the coin, and when Batman appears and tries to stop Two Face, she uses that understanding to keep Two-Face focused on the rescue effort and to keep Batman from interfering. That understanding reaches Two-Face in a way I don't think I've ever seen him reached before, and he wants to reach back.

Unfortunately, the only way he knows how to do that is through his coin, and the law of averages dictates that it has to come up tails the same number of times it comes up heads.

As "Half a Life" progresses, the story becomes about Montoya's own personal duality, an identity that she keeps secret, and the way that Two Face's reliance on the coin forces the two halves of her life out in the open and utterly destroys them both. It's a brutal process, and you can see the toll it exacts on Montoya's family, her friends, and her partners at the department, but especially on her. It hurt to read this comic, it was that well written.

I'm not going to reveal the nature of Montoya's secret, except to say that it's handled well. The only complaints I have are that the secret is a little stereotypical, given her career; and that I think Batman, while he makes a great part of the background, makes a lousy deux ex machina. But the story is handled extremely well and honestly.

It's no wonder this received the 2004 Eisner Award for Best Story. It is fantastic.

My library has saved us a small fortune in books and videos over the past year, and trips like this one have let me read about $60 worth of graphic novels and determine that I'd really like to own only $15 worth of them. The comic shop isn't nearly that understanding.

The other comics I borrowed from the library this trip include a collection from Mark Waid's run on "Fantastic Four" where they visit God, best skipped; and his series "JLA: Year One." That one at least is a decent, fast-paced comic with some real character development of the classic Silver Age characters and team, but it's worth reading only once, and will go back to the library today.

"Half a Life" stays until its due date, and then it goes on my list of must-haves.



Copyright © 2006 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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