Marriage, Family and Parenthood

Five years ago today, I married this beautiful woman and my life has never been better. We’ve shared a few sorrows, but many more joys. And while I imagined the children we would have, I was not prepared for how awesome they are.

Five years already. Looking forward to many more.

I love you, Melanie.

P.S. How awesome is it that today’s Gospel reading extols the virtue of marriage and the two becoming one?

From the nuptial blessing in the rite of marriage in the Roman Missal:

Lord our God,
creator of the universe and all living things,
you made man and woman in your own likeness (Gn 1,27)
and gave them loving hearts
with which to participate in your work of love.
You willed that in this church today
the lives of your servants, N. and N., should be united,
and now you will that they may make their home together,
may seek to love each other more and more each day
and follow Christ’s example in his love for others
even to death on the cross.
Bless, strengthen and protect the love of these newlyweds;
may their love sustain their fidelity to each other,
bringing them happiness and causing them find in Christ
the joy of complete self-giving to the one they love.
May their love, like yours, O Lord,
become a source of life;
may it make them ever attentive to the needs of their neighbors;
and may their home be open to all in need.
Supported by their love, and the love of Christ,
may they play an active part
in building up a more just and fraternal world
and thus be faithful to their human and christian vocation.
Amen

Something one of our priests said in his homily a couple of weeks ago got me thinking about a way I could exercise my spiritual duties as father and husband. Father told an anecdote in his homily about a friend of his who set his cell phone to beep on the hour every day to remind him to pray for his wife and kids, wherever he happened to be.

I like that idea. I would like to be able to pray the Liturgy of the Hours every day, marking each of the hours of the day with readings and prayers, like religious and priests do. Unfortunately, there just isn’t the time for it. I’m often in meetings or deep in a project and by the time the end of the day rolls around I can’t believe 8 hours has passed.

But this I could do.

So I set up a series of reminders using my favorite to-do web service at RememberTheMilk.com that are timed for each hour. Starting at 9am, RTM sends a notification through their iPhone app to my phone to pray for Melanie. I stop for a moment, say a quick prayer for her needs and intentions and that I would be the husband she needs me to be. Again, at 10, I pray for Isabella, her needs and intentions, and that Melanie and I would be the parents she needs us to be. Then at 11 for Sophia, 1pm for Ben (noon being too distracting with going to lunch), and 2pm for our unborn baby.

Occasionally, I’m talking to someone, or on the phone, or in a meeting when the top of the hour rolls around, but as soon as I can after the hour, I take a minute to pause and pray.

I can’t be with Melanie and the kids every day, all day like I would want, but it’s a way for me to be present with them and to be caring for them even as I go about my workday. It’s a kind of father’s Liturgy of the Hours.

Update: Something I forgot to mention: Last week, Melanie told me that during her weekly trip to the grocery store, she lost track of Sophia at the checkout. Our little 2-year-old had wandered out the doors of the market and a kind woman had come back in to find the mother of the crying little girl outside. I was shaken up hearing about it and Melanie was quite shaken up at the time too. But when she she told me about it later, she mentioned the time of day she got home and got the kids lunch and put them down for naps. I realized then that the incident at the checkout happened at just about 11am, right when I was praying for Sophia. The Holy Spirit moves in mysterious ways.

I can’t believe my boy turned 1 year old on Friday. It’s a cliché, but where has the time gone.

“Why do guys do that?” As a married man with single female friends, it’s a common refrain, often delivered in an exasperated voice following a sad tale of some guy being generally obnoxious. Usually the guy is clueless to his bumbling ways, but it’s always about a guy trying to romance her. Often, he’s being creepy by being too forward, moving too fast, showing up in unexpected places, or assuming too much. I know this because I was that guy once. (I’ve told the embarrassing tale of my first “date” with my wife often enough; I’m moving on.)

So “why do guys do that?”, meaning whatever action is driving the object of his affections away. Well, I’m here to tell you ladies, that we do it because you told us to.

No, not you specifically, but you generally. As in, the fairer sex. Just when did you tell us? In the only places we get exposed to it these days: Romantic comedy and drama movies and TV shows. You know what I’m talking about. There’s Chris O’Donnell, brooding and good-looking, and he’s alienated the leading lady, say, a fetching and endearing Minnie Driver. So he either shows up unannounced at her house with a massive gesture of a gift, say a bouquet of flowers that would choke a horse. Or he sweeps her off her feet to some romantic moment manufactured by him, a candlelit dinner on a rooftop overlooking the sunset over the bay. Or she comes home to a family reunion she was dreading, one in which she anticipates the inevitable “why are you single?” questions, and he’s already there, like one of the family, fitting into her life so perfectly. And later on, in the moonlight, they walk and talk and he stops to kiss her. She resists at first, but then gives in to his advance. Cue the violins.

Admit it, ladies, for just a moment, you swooned. Maybe a little. (Okay, Melanie, I know you didn’t, but let the other ladies admit the moment.)

This is what Hollywood has been shoveling out for decades as the ultimate perfection of romance. And generations of men, dragged to these movies by girlfriends, have seen the women they’re with swoon over the saccharine seductions and become convinced that this must be what women want. And so they try it out with disastrous results. Show up up unannounced and hang out with the intended paramour’s family and you’ll be labeled a stalker. Try to force that kiss on her and you’ll be explaining to the nice police officer that Chris O’Donnell did it and Minnie swooned. The problem is none of us are Chris O’Donnell or Matt Damon or Brad Pitt or all the rest of the romantic leading men. And, ladies, be glad we aren’t.

Now, I’m not excusing the dumb and sometimes downright creepy antics of some of my brothers out there. We should all know better than to think that anything we see on the big or small screen in any way reflects the way people do or ought to behave. But we’ve been conditioned.

So while I’m not saying you ladies should excuse creepy or disrespectful or forward behavior from men who seek your affections, especially when his attention is unwanted, I’m just saying, realize what generations of silver screen romance have wrought in our relationships, false expectations and manufactured moments and all.

N.B. Melanie also reminds me that it doesn’t take much to encourage a guy in the first place. Melanie tells me that when she was in college she would go out to a bar with friends, and some guy would start chatting her up. So being shy and polite, she’d listen and smile, in contrast to all the women who take sport in crushing male egos by not even giving them the time of day or only wanting to talk about themselves. The men would take this as a sign of interest by Melanie and hit on her and ask for her number, when really all she wanted was for the creepy bar guy to leave her alone so she could hang out with her friends and then go home to curl up with a good book.

So that’s another reason guys do “that”. Men are like puppies in that way: Show him some interest, be nice to him, don’t talk just about yourself and it must be a sign that you’re into him. I’m sorry but it’s rough out there in the dating trenches and they’re generally shell-shocked.

Photo credit: Photo by DarkB4Dawn - http://flic.kr/p/5PofCf

Journalists and social scientists are shocked by new findings that show that parents who have more daughters than sons tend to be more politically conservative. Some previous studies had shown the opposite result. The old thinking was that since conservative policies oppress women, I mean, “constrain[...] the freedom of women,” then of course parents of women would want to be liberal, right? So how to explain the opposite result?

The authors of this latest study suggest that conservative policies “support the genetic fitness of women by capitalizing on each pregnancy, reducing male promiscuity, and increasing paternal investment in children” and ultimately maximizing the number of grandchildren, despite restricting the freedom of daughters.

In other words, conservative parents are willing to put their daughters into lifelong bondage and oppression as long as it means lots of grandkids.

Of course, the premise itself is flawed. The study’s authors, at least according to the reporter, start with the premise that conservative policies are opposed to the women’s freedom. But what “freedom” would conservatives curtail? The right to work? The ability to marry the man of their choice at a time of their choosing? No, the narrow definition of freedom here is obviously so-called reproductive freedom, i.e. abortion and contraception.

In a less pejorative interpretation of conservative motives, we might say that we would prefer our daughters not to be subject to the destructive effects of abortion and contraception and a mentality that treats their fertility (certainly not that of our sons) as a disease. We could also say that conservative economic ideas would assist women and their families as much as liberals think their liberal economic ideas would help. We’re not both going to be right, but you could assume that we both think we’re right and that’s why we hold them.

Maybe, just maybe, Republicans and conservatives love their daughters as much as, and for the same reasons as, Democrats and liberals.

“The Council of Dads” by Bruce Feiler is a memoir of his “Lost Year” in which he underwent treatment for bone cancer and his quest to ensure that his twin 3-year-old daughters would have men in their lives who embody all the best traits of their dad in the event he died.

The book’s chapters alternate between periodic letters he sent to friends and family updating them as to how he and his family were dealing with the cancer and treatment; chapters about the six men from his life he chose to be on his council of dads; and chapters about the other men in his life: his father, his grandfathers, his oncologist.

Feiler is in his early 40s, Jewish, grew up in Savannah, lives in Brooklyn, and is an author and traveler. He wrote the book “Walking the Bible: A Journey By Land Through the Five Books of Moses”, which was later made into a TV show. In 2008, he was diagnosed with a rare cancer in the bone of his left leg. Confronted with his mortality, he asks six men from all phases of his life, each of them embodying one aspect of his “voice”, that they could pass on to his daughters: Jump into life’s experiences; always be true to yourself; believe you can succeed; stay rooted in the places you’re from; passionately search for the answers to your questions and always find new questions; find the beauty and miracles that are always around you.

The details of how this council would work are left unwritten. Would there be a formal arrangement of visits and trips or would they just be available for the girls as they needed each man’s presence? How would a man who lives hundreds of miles away be a surrogate dad? The details are actually unimportant. Deciding them ahead of time does a disservice to the idea because no one can know how the girls’ needs would arise, especially if Feiler himself lives for years past his remission. Or if he doesn’t die during their childhood, but lives a long life. Even then their advice could be helpful.

Being in a similar state in life—early ’40s, young children—it was natural to reflect on how I would react to a similar situation. Who would be on my Council of Dads for my kids? My brothers, certainly. A few close friends. Some mentors I’ve had. But I don’t know that I could say that I could identify six men who would embody my “voice”, so it was a little hard to identify with that project. But in a way it’s similar to the classic idea of the godfather, a man who would be there for your kids if you couldn’t be for some reason. You would choose this godfather because he would raise your kids the way you would.

The wisdom in this book became for me an opportunity to reflect on my philosophy as a dad, making me a better dad for having considered what I would do in his place; what Melanie would do to ensure the father influence that would reflect who I am would remain in our kids lives. Certainly, Feiler and I don’t agree on everything, but the roots are there. So often I had to stop to read a passage to Melanie because it either was so profound or it is so closely reflected our own experiences with our kids that it could have been our own children. For example, they had a game they played before bed where they related something good or bad in their lives.

Eden’s good was, “Daddy is using one crutch now, so I can hold his hand.” Tybee followed with this bit of wisdom. “I have so much love in my body for you, Daddy, that I can’t stop giving you hugs and kisses. And when I have no more love left, I just drink milk, because that’s where love comes from.”

It’s so perfect because that’s something Isabella would say.

The book ends with the letter from Feiler to his daughters that he hopes they will never have to read, in which he tells them about the Council of Dads, but then gives them his fatherly advice and wisdom. It’s the sort of letter all of us should write to our loved ones, because none of us know the day or hour. Feiler had the gift of having his attention focused on this possibility. So I think I will write a letter to each of my kids and then make a habit of updating it every year. And maybe that will become my “Counsel of Dad” (sic).

What is it with the manufacturers of child & infant products, like highchairs? Sometimes it seems like the people designing and marketing these things don’t have kids of their own. Take our high chair, for example. It’s a Graco, one of the less expensive, mass-market brands. We bought this particular chair four years ago just before Isabella was born and it’s served both Sophia and Benedict too.

It’s not a bad high chair, although there was a recent recall that replaced some screws that were prone to work themselves out of their places and added a piece of fabric that attaches to all four legs to prevent the chair from doing splits if another piece of plastic breaks as it apparently could. As a side benefit, the fabric acts as a convenient tarp for catching all the food that falls from the tray. Ick.

But what really baffles me is how the chair is packaged. There’s the usual tray that attaches to the chair in front of the child, but Graco also provides a removable tray that goes on top of it. The idea is that if you place the food on this removable tray—which is on top of the other also removable tray, mind you—then when the child is done imitating Jackson Pollock, you just whisk it away to the sink. And Graco provides not one, but two of these trays. And they go on top of the regular removable tray that every high chair comes with to make three removable trays.

Keep in mind that while two of these trays are in use—because you can’t use the top removable tray without the removable part that attaches to the chair (It’s getting difficult to describe this; Click the zoom button on this chair and you should see what I mean)—the third tray has to be stored somewhere. But what’s really annoying is that the trays are light enough and don’t actually snap onto anything that a 1-year-old child can easily get his hand gripped on the edge and flip it off. Yeah, we know this by experience. So early on we stopped using the little trays and just serve food right on the regular tray, which washes just fine in the sink and can go right back onto the chair when Ben is done.

So the two extra trays are pretty useless. But what would be nice to have an extra of is the seat cover. That seat cover gets downright nasty with ground-in, mushed banana, pasta, Cheerios, and a miasma of fruits, vegetables, and proteins. The problem is that there’s only one of them and you can’t use the chair without it. So you either have to remember to pop the thing right into the wash as soon as he’s done with dinner to have a hope that it will be ready by breakfast or else hand wash it in the sink as best you can, wring it out, and then hope it dries by morning.

So we get two trays that are essentially useless and only one seat cover that would great if we had a second.

Now, maybe these folks really do use their products because I see that at least some of their highchairs come with a second seat cover. They’re fast learners, these baby gear manufacturers.

Photo by Coreyu - http://flic.kr/p/4r4yBk

The big news in Massachusetts right now is the effort to passage a comprehensive anti-bullying bill in the Legislature, which some say is the toughest in the nation. Yet critics complain that it doesn’t go far enough. But can any legislative action really find a solution to the causes of bullying among children?

Phoebe Prince was a 15-year-old immigrant attending high school in the rural Western Massachusetts town of South Hadley. By all accounts, she was in a living hell constructed by jealous female classmates and their male accomplices, angry that she had the temerity to date a popular guy when she was new to the school. In January, fed up with the bullying, Phoebe hanged herself at home where her younger sibling found her. Since then, anger and outrage has erupted against the teachers and administrators who some say knew or should have known about the bullying and did nothing. The outrage turned into the predictable scene of grandstanding politicians vowing to pass a law to fix the problem.

But can any law really fix what’s wrong here? I doubt new laws can fix pretty much any of our problems, yet we’ve grown accustomed to demanding such action when the news reveals another outrage or horror that evades easy fix. We don’t like to consider that the way to deal with such social problems doesn’t allow a quick fix.

So what’s the solution? It might be easier to look at the problem. In another Massachusetts school district an administrator was criticized for proposing a ban on middle-school girls showing cleavage with the scanty clothing. That’s right, 12- and 13-year-old girls. This is apparently a problem because they’ve already banned midriff-baring clothes and exposed underwear. As a father, there’s no way one of my girls is leaving this house at at any age with such clothing. That’s my job as a father. It seems not all parents see it that way.

The proposal was shot down because it “unfairly” targets girls. In that case, I’m okay with a ban on cleavage-baring clothes for boys. Seriously, the real problem here is evinced with the school committee member’s backtracking comments after the proposal’s failure:

“My personal experience in the classroom and supervising the classroom was that exposed cleavage was distracting to students in the classroom. As a result, I just thought I’d bring it up,” said School Committee member Fran Simanski of the Tantasqua district, which serves students from Brimfield, Sturbridge, Wales, Holland and Brookfield. “I have zero interest in being any kind of moral compass.” (Emphasis added)

Right there is your problem. He states, almost matter-of-factly but definitely defensively, that he doesn’t want to be a moral compass. In fact, it is a matter of public educator orthodoxy today that “imposing” morality or any kind of traditional values forbidden. Thus, the people in charge of our children’s formation and education for six hours per day have abdicated responsibility for helping parents set their moral compass. Meanwhile, every other societal structure concerned with inculcating moral behavior in youth has been attacked, marginalized, or perverted: churches, Scouting, sports leagues. Many children still receive proper formation in these places, but far fewer than once there were. At one time, parents could rest assured that society was just as concerned as them with ensuring their children became moral adults. But now too many adults are more concerned with being cool and admired by kids.

Ask anyone who was in school before, say, 1960, what it was like. Children were expected to live up to certain standards of decorum, dress, and, yes, morality. Today, we’re having a hard time keeping small-town kids from turning “Lord of the Flies” on each other. Good thing educators have “zero interest in being any kind of moral compass.”

Photo by John Steven Fernandez - http://flic.kr/p/4BsDQy

To think, Martha Coakley almost become our US Senator. The erstwhile Senate candidate and current Massachusetts attorney general wants a federal judge to declare by fiat that the federal marriage protection law is unconstitutional. And she wants him to declare it without even the pretense of a trial.

Coakley argued that regulating marital status is traditionally left to the states. She said the federal law treats married heterosexual couples and same-sex couples differently in determining eligibility for Medicaid benefits and whether the spouse of a veteran can be buried in a veterans’ cemetery.

The law forces the state “to engage in invidious discrimination against its own citizens in order to receive and retain federal funds in connection with two joint federal-state programs,” Coakley argued. “Massachusetts cannot receive or retain federal funds if it gives same-sex and different-sex spouses equal treatment …”

Except, it’s only “invidious discrimination” if you’ve decided a priori that two people of the same sex can be married. But since the duly-elected representatives of the people of the United States have declared otherwise then by definition it’s not discrimination for the federal government to deny funds intended for married couples to people who aren’t really married. In addition, because of the “full faith and credit” clause of the US Constitution, the federal government can’t make an exception for Massachusetts or any other state that has decided to ignore human nature and the realities of thousands of years of human culture and civilization on the subject of marriage. And even more, since the people of Massachusetts have been denied their right to address this topic either through their representatives or through direct referendum—instead having it forced on them by, not coincidentally, judicial fiat—Coakley’s ploy here is more of the same liberal agenda to force social engineering over the objections of the governed, by deciding for the “proles” what’s best for them.

I can’t wait until this fall when we can finally put Martha out to pasture once and for all. Hopefully we can finally find someone who will actually uphold both the Massachusetts and US Constitutions against all these attempts to undermine them and attack the foundations of our republic.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons license.

In June 2008, our offices moved from Brighton to Braintree, to a relatively new office building that sits on the edge of an office park, but is right next to a large cemetery. For some reason that felt right. Memento mori, after all, was a common refrain of medieval scholastics. And so the window next to my cubicle (excuse me… “workstation”) looked out over the cemetery and specifically its newest section.

On the day we moved in, my colleagues and I noticed a group of cars parked next to a gravestone. It was obviously not a funeral. In fact, it resembled a picnic. The cars’ occupants were sitting in lawn chairs next to the grave under the sunny June sky. We remarked at the strangeness of it, but figured they must be friends and relatives of the recently deceased giving him one last goodbye.

But over the following days and weeks and months, I noticed a pattern. Every day,there was at least one car next to that grave, usually around noon and for a large part of an hour. Sometimes there were two cars. If it was sunny and warm, a woman could be seen standing next to the grave or sometimes sitting in a chair. If it was raining or cold, she would remain in the warmth of the car. Who is the woman keeping a daily vigil?

Finally, curiousity got the better of one of my co-workers and me so one day, after the woman had gone, we hopped in a car and drove around to the cemetery’s entrance and then to the grave we had been keeping watch over and suddenly it became clear. The gravestone was carved with images of toy cars and checkered flags and the dates told us that boy buried here had been only 13 when he’d died. The woman we had seen must be the mother of the boy, who we’ll call “Timmy”.

Back at the office, I googled Timmy’s name and date of death and found a newspaper article detailing his untimely end. He was the only child of a single mom who had remarried. One day, not long ago, he had been riding in a local park with his stepfather, when he lost control of his bike and crashed into a tree. Despite wearing a helmet, he was killed.

And so this woman, this mother, comes every day to visit the earthly remains of the child she lost.

Melanie and I have discussed the unique grief of a woman who loses an only child versus a woman with many children. The loss of a child is an anguish that is as deep in either case, but the mother of many children is pulled forward into daily life each day by the needs and love of her other children. The mother who loses her only child could be caught in the whirlpool of grief without an anchor to pull herself free.

The mother still keeps her lonely vigil 18 months later and longer and every time I see her, I say a prayer for her. I don’t know if she’s Catholic or even religious, but I hope that the presence of the Eucharist in our building’s chapel and the many Masses and prayers offered in this place are a kind of consolation to her, even if she does not know about them.