Normal adult conversations

... are basically non-existent in our house anymore.

In part,  because our house is a DMZ patrolled by these marauders...

They have a wonderful way of dividing and conquering - - they send an innocent-looking little baby to one side to try and distract the mama ( it almost always works)  while across the way the barriers go up. By the time we even know it, we're trapped on opposite sides of the house screaming important life details like " exactly which medication was I taking?"  This sort of thing seems like it will eventually lead to another delightful visit to the emergency room, with my face swollen up like a puffer fish.

( thankfully, that hasn't happened yet.)

The other reason we don't have a lot of normal adult conversations anymore is that I think we're both sick of talking about the super serious stuff. There's only so much you can reflect on an upcoming eulogy or exactly how much pain you're in on a scale of one to ten before it just gets a little tedious.

And so we skip the 'normal' conversation and revel in the unusual. We choose to snort when delightful younger set has an engaging conversation full of unintentional double entendre.  Literally, they had one today that I don't think I can transcribe without getting banned from this blog and /or arrested.

We choose to delight in the fact that even as life draws to a close, God's good gift of humor still remains intact. Recently Rachel's terminally ill father woke up at one point from a near -coma muttering
"crisis..."
 "averted."

So no, life won't be normal for a while, if ever. But maybe, in the mystery of God's grace, it was never normal anyway.

Kyrie Eleison

Lord, have mercy.

It has become the waking Cry of my heart - - and the anthem as I fall asleep. It has become my prayer for my wife and children - - and the subtle theme I can see woven into the fabric of our lives over the past few weeks. It is a prayer that has been heard throughout the ages, since time immemorial, but it is always heard - - and it is often answered.

How is it in this prayer has interwoven itself so deeply into our lives that I cannot think of life without it anymore?

That is a tale that may require some length in the telling. It is part brokenness, part grace, often ugly, and a testament to the fact that sharing even in a small part in the sufferings of Christ is not nearly as much fun as books make it seem.

Most of you who will be reading this have already entered into our story in your thoughts, prayers, and amazing response to needs we have both spoken and left unspoken. Thank you. We cannot say it enough. Hopefully the vignettes that are to follow on this blog will be a picture to you of the grace that you have afforded us, and your heart will be touched as well. Until the restoration comes... more stories will follow.

Memento mori

I preface this vignette today by saying that I may be writing it to feel better -- to remember the (somewhat) sweet amidst the gong show that today has been, starting with the 4am declaration by my sweet and only daughter that if I didn't lay down next to her bed and hold her hand until she fell asleep, she would scream until everyone woke up. This lady understand when she has someone over a barrel.  I acquiesced -- only to wake up at 6am to Judah towering over me, demanding, "WHY ARE YOU IN OUR ROOM, DAD? You need to leave."    And that was the high point so far. Ugh.

Anyways, as seems so often, a rough day can be redeemed by the conclusion thereof.  And so three nights ago after yet another brutal waking stretch for the urchins, we settled in at 7:00 (ok, maybe 7:25), took a deep breath, had some silent time, sang our hearts out to Jesus, and were settling in to bed when we came upon the very last part of the day -- blessings.  I generally place my hands on their hands, make the sign of the cross and ask for something on my heart for them -- peaceful dreams, kindness, ability to look each other in the eye without attempting to blacken said eyes, etc.  As I went to kiss him and head out, Elijah grabbed me and started kissing my face. (This won't be embarrassing later in life or anything.) I backed up quickly -- emotions aren't really my thing, and my sense of personal space may be overdeveloped.  "Sometimes people like it if you give them one kiss instead of one hundred.

"But, Dad," he protested," I just love you so much that I want to kiss you as long as we are alive."

My heart thawed.

He continued," Or at least as long as you're alive, Dad.  We both know you're going to die first. Love you."

Memento mori.

The Grass is Always Greener, Part 2

So a self-indulgent moment (and apology rolled into one):  Since the last post, I have passed the second of eight major career exams that I am trying to jam into the 2016 calendar year, so I finally have a tiny window of time again to chronicle the mayhem happening daily around me as I try to study.  I may simply get them all to paper (figurative paper, at least) and release them slowly over the next month.  In the meantime, enjoy this sequel...

If you haven't read the earlier aspect of this story, it may help explain a couple things.  It can be found here: http://lifeonkingarthurscourt.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-grass-is-always-greener-part-1.html

Anyways, inspired by Elijah's insecurities about the decline of his supremacy over all aspects of siblinghood, Judah woke up the next day and decided, " Gosh darn it, why should LJ have all the fun?"

And so this happened as I tried to put them to bed that evening:

Elijah:  "Dad, I have a tricky question for you."
Me: "Mmm- hmm."
Elijah: "You're not going to get it."
Me: "What's the question?"
Elijah: "Don't say I didn't warn you -- what's one thousand plus one hundred plus one?"
Me: (immediately): "Eleven hundred and one."
Elijah: "Wow! How'd you do that?"

{Sidebar: this was very really good tactically on his part because quick math in my head is about the only life skill I have left.  He should have challenged me to a memory contest -- I have the attention span of a goldfish at this point in my life, and that's insulting to goldfish -- or a karate contest. However, I was not the only one with a trick up my sleeve...}

Elijah continued, "That's pretty good. Now I'm going to give you a real hard one.  One thousand times one thousand."
Me: A million.
Elijah (not impressed this time): Fine -- did you know that I taught myself 30 times 30?
Me: What?
Elijah: It's nine hundred.
--At this point, I was thankful it was dark so he couldn't see the dumb grin on my face.
Me: How did you do that?
Elijah:  Well, they taught up in class that 3 times 3 is nine.  And I remembered someone told me that when you multiply with zero on the end, you add the zero on the end of the answer.  So I multiplied 3 times 3 and added two zeroes on the end. Nine hundred.
Me: Wow.  So what's thirty times twenty.
Elijah: Six hundred.  And twenty times twenty is four hundred.
Judah: Mmm-hmm.  It's not just LJ learning math -- I have been teaching myself math too.

Poor little fella -- I had been so enthralled with Elijah's conceptual math that I had almost forgotten he was there.

Me: Oh good, Judah.  What have you been learning?

Judah (with no hesitation):  Today in my math books I taught myself that 6 plus 6 is 11, Dad!"

He couldn't have been prouder! (I tried so hard not to howl my way out the door!)

I have a sneaky suspicion that this subling rivalry may never die...

The Grass is Always Greener, Part 1

I'm pretty sure that the writer of Proverbs knew his stuff when he said that "a brother is born for adversity."  Only in our house they don't support each other in times of adversity, they ARE the times of adversity. It's funny how that works. 

It's one of those absolutely depressing paradoxes of life that the harder you try not to pass on your deeply embedded flaws to your children, the more certain that they will have the trait branded into their soul.  After spending my entire life trying to prove that I measured up in the maniacally competitive atmosphere that was my family(I think the example that best shows the crazy going around is that four of my five siblings won a full ride to high school and after the fact, so nastily teased the only one who finished second (out of 50-odd applicants, mind you) that I wouldn't blame them if it's something still remembered), I vowed that I would raise children who knew exactly how valued they were if they never won a damn thing in their life. Even to this day, we don't say "Good boy!" or "Good girl!" but instead say, "Good action!"  to try and dissociate the person --immortal-- from the behavior, which hopefully can change.  Hopefully. Hopefully.  (Side note: this leads almost weekly a beautiful moment when you have a 2 or 5-year old running behind a baby hollering, "BAD ACTION, ARYEL!  BAD ACTION!"  as our little marauder cleans out a shelf not yet baby-proofed.

The above is of course why I have children so competitive that they assign scores to things like how well they brushed their teeth or how many toys they managed to put away during clean-up.  I don't think there's a cure for that. 

Elijah, in particular, has been feeling the soul weight a little bit lately.  As a fellow firstborn, I feel his pain acutely.  There's no applause for winning when you are inherently bigger, stronger and faster.  We have an appetite for underdogs and Cinderella stories, but nobody cheers when the proverbial Goliath stomps out David like all the Philistines thought would happen.   Judah has been recently finding his niche at soccer, bike riding and skateboarding, among other things, and poor Elijah, used to being superior in many academic ways, finally had enough one day.  "Dad!" he exploded, "Judah wins everything!  It's not fair!"

"I'm sorry," I stuttered, completely caught off guard by the outburst. Unhelpfully,  I initially tried to combat it with facts.  You read better, you love math, you're excellent at karate, etc.  I had heard, but I hadn't discerned. "No, Dad! You give him pennies and coins for his piggy bank!  You play baseball and all the things that he wants to do!  And he even wins Memory!"  (All true, and not something I had ever thought would be construed as anything but acts of love.)

But my metaphor-mixing lawyer wasn't finished.  "I don't matter about the everything else, but I just want a lucky day!"  It was all I could do to not crack up at the most serious parental moment in years.  Rough translation:  "I love him too, but I need you to affirm me!"  I pulled him aside.  "I can't make you win everything.  God gives us each special talents. But you have been given so much."  I pointed out how we each have something to contribute to the world that only we can give -- Elijah LOVES people; Judah and I are somewhat allergic to extroverts; Judah has amazing kinetic balance; Jael perserveres, etc.  And -- glory hallelujah! -- he understood. 

Crisis temporarily averted. To quote Mumford and Sons in Only Love, "
And I hunger and I thirst
For some shiver
For some whispered words
And the promise to come." I had been trying to feed the immortal desires of his love-starved soul with the moldy bread that is 'winning'.

Luckily, there's a lot that a (literal) pancake breakfast date can fix, but it was a jarring reminder that ad campaigns be darned, it doesn't get easier.  Life (and parenting) gets bigger as you go.  The stakes will only get higher and the issues more complex.  Grace be with us all.

Tune in next time for the flip side of the brotherly competition in which Judah decided to take on Elijah at math...

Sometimes it's better to forget...

So I just got back from the perfect vacation.  (Keep in mind, I'm an introvert.  This isn't going to be as exciting as you think.)

Where did I go, you ask?  The library. Every day -- except the day I destroyed an entire shed.  (That's a later post -- no worries)   I went to the third floor.  In a corner. With lots of books.  You know what I did?  I studied.  (Frankly, it didn't matter what I did.  It was hauntingly quiet.  AND -- AND ... I had a large frozen cappuccino to myself.)

It was a perfect vacation.  From 11am to 3 pm every day.  The rest of my vacation was spent with the kids, who are not nearly so blissfully quiet, but sooo worth it.... and then I got to go back to work, where this week has been so crazy that when a co-worker left on a stretcher surrounded by EMTs today, it didn't even seem that out of place.

**I'm writing this at 1 am, so this story will be short, but there are more to come.  The anecdotes that happen when you jam six people (most under the age of eight) into a tiny space just have a life of their own, like this vignette below **

It was 7:30pm, and the kids were late for bed.  Now I say this like they EVER go to bed at 7:00 when bedtime is officially charted.  Never happens.  7pm is bedtime in the Court like 55 miles per hour is the speed limit in our great state.  It's not actually expected that you follow the rule;  however, when 7:15 rolls around and we're just starting our story, I pick a nice short one under the auspices that "we're running 15 minutes late!"  No one is fooled. Anyways, we were running '30' minutes late, so Rachel had graciously stepped in to assist the bedtime process.  We were just about to start the nightly praise songs to Jesus when Judah loudly interjected, "Mom!  I need to tell you something before you sing!"

"Ok," Rachel said.  "What is it?"

Long pause.  "I don't remember."  This is standard Judah fare; the thoughts in his own head are so interesting that sometimes they mug each other before they even get down to his tongue.  Onward we proceeded through a rollicking chorus (5 of us singing, Aryel howling like a wolf) when, just before prayer, Judah burst out again, "Mom, I remembered!"

"Honey, what is it?" Rachel said.

"Mom," (here he looked at her pointedly) "Mom, I didn't want you to be here."

That boy knows how to make his mama feel loved! 

An open letter to my work...

Dear workplace,

 Ever wonder why I look like hell in the morning?  Do you wish that every once in awhile, I'd seem fresh as a daisy at 8:00am on a Monday, having had the entire weekend to rest?  It seems reasonable.  You only demand 40 hours a week from me (in fact, you regulate the aforementioned 40 as if I might collapse under the terrible strain of sitting for --gasp!-- 40.5 hours at a desk... that last 1/2 hr might just do me in), and in return all you ask is that I'm cheerful for the small amount of time we spend together. Do you wish I wouldn't get off the phone and say, "That lady reminds me of my two-year-old?"

To this very reasonable proposition, I have the following to say: I'm sorry, it will never happen.  EVER. That's all. Mainly because of stories like this...

By Sunday evening, I had been going straight for about 6 consecutive days.  The week had been spent on a business trip, and I don't really sleep away from home.  I don't sleep at home either, but for entirely different reasons. In addition, Rachel had been playing heroine for 5 days while I was away, and was understandably a little tired of said muglets, so I spent a little more time with them over the weekend than normal.  By the time 6:00 pm rolled around, we could all have used a little time away from one another.  Aryel took this to heart and started crawling without any notice whatsoever, which led to a couple of "where the heck is he?" moments before we finally got our act together, and the regular wars that are waged daily by the remainder of the troops were met with great wrath by the governing body (ME)!  So when Elijah proposed that we go out for ice cream to redeem the free sundae he had received from his karate academy, it seemed like a great idea,

(Keep in mind that the only defense I can offer in retrospect is that we were pretty tired (tired enough that the kids offered to drive -- I think I'm joking) at this point and we may not have considered just how amped that they would be.  I know -- it sounds weak to me too.)

The rest of the trip unfolded something like this:

(Car pulls out of driveway.)

Judah: Dad, we're going the wrong way!
Me: Your mom hasn't even gotten out of the parking lot yet.
Elijah: Yeah, we're going to the other ice cream place.
Jael: What other one? Are we still getting ice cream?
Aryel: (High pitched squeaking roughly translated as, "I'm getting ice cream, right? RIGHT?)
Elijah: I'm getting peppermint stick!
Judah: Me too.
Elijah: Ok, then I'm getting candy cane.
Judah: Me too.
Rachel:  They're the same thing.
Elijah: Ok, then I'll get peppermint stick and Judah can get candy cane.  That way everyone can have what they want and we don't have to get the same kind.

... we continued in that vein until yours truly lost it (about 2 seconds) and demanded that nobody speak the rest of the trip until we got there. 

We pulled in and ambled over to the sign that held all the ice cream flavors.

Elijah: See, Candy cane!
Judah: (points at same thing) Peppermint stick!

I should have gone back to the not-speaking gig at this point, but again, I was tired.  That is going to be my excuse throughout the entire post.  Get used to it.  Somehow, we dragged them up there, ordered a cup, then a cone, then a cup again, for pretty much everyone (God bless the long-suffering high schooler behind the glass trying to make a little extra weekend money), and dragged everyone back to the car whining because they couldn't stand out in the rain to eat their ice cream.

So there we were, in an SUV in the rain.  It was like a romantic ice cream date with your sweetheart if the Goonies dropped in.

Judah: Dad!
-- Yes!?
Judah: Are we going to go soon... my ice cream is dripping!
--Um, no eat it now.  We aren't driving anywhere while you eat.
Judah: Oh.
Elijah: I'll eat it.
Judah: NO!
Elijah: Ok, well, if you change your mind, I'm just about done mine. Here, I'll lick it for you.

(The response was in the negative.)

Jael: De-wicious!
Elijah: Are you done?
Jael: Mmm-hmm.
Elijah: Thanks!  (Starts in on ice cream #2)  Dad, you done?
---Aren't you going to be full?
Elijah: Oh no, my belly has special rooms for ice cream. Mama, are you going to need some help?
Rachel: No, thanks, Elijah.
Aryel: (high pitched squealing roughly translated as "I'm here to help!")

Finally, five minutes and fifty volunteer efforts from Elijah and Aryel to 'help' with the ice cream, we headed for home,  Judah decided to help clean Jael's fingers by licking them clean (my Lord, sometimes it's like having cats), but we were almost home when an odd sound was heard from the back seat.

--Judah, what's that noise?
Judah: Oh, it LJ.
--Elijah, stop making that noise.
Elijah: I can't, Dad. It's my belly.  It's telling me that it doesn't think that I should have any more ice cream -- EVER!


...And you can imagine the rest.  So if I ever drag into work, looking like it was a rough night indeed, it probably was...

But the good news is, I'm so talented, I can look like hell without any alcohol being involved whatsoever. Cheers!



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