ThomStratton.com

One of the most amazing experiences in a person’s life is to open your life up to someone else, to make room in your world for another person. Or, as most often happens, abandoning your world to build a new one with another person. It’s not always easy, sometimes painful, but your world becomes much larger for it.

When I think of all the things in my life that might never have happened had I not married my wife I quickly realize the list is by no means small. Many of the items were entirely unexpected. For example, while I expected that in marrying a Finn I would get to know Finland better, I never expected that marrying a Finn would also lead me to a greater appreciation of baseball. Or cats. Or John Wayne or Elvis.

I never anticipated the pleasure I would derive from simply sitting on the couch reading and listening to my wife play piano. I never imagined that food could have “history”, or that I would ever come to like peppers or raisins. I never expected I could come to judge most mass-produced desserts as “too darn sweet”, or that I would ever have an opinion on soy milk brands.

But perhaps the most amazing thing that happens is that they are abandoning their world to be with you. The implied love and trust are not to be taken lightly. They have chosen you. That should be taken as the ultimate compliment.

My wife was willing to move  to another continent, to a place where she knew no one, to start a new life with me. That, if nothing else, should make me feel good about myself. My wife is a fantastic catch. She is kind, talented, organized, and beautiful inside and out. She improves everything she touches, including me. She’s got class, grace, and elegance, and she doesn’t just “settle” on anything.

And she chose to be with me.

Many a parent, frustrated with a rebellious child, has uttered the words, “may you someday have a child just like you!” I wouldn’t say that having children is a curse, but it’s definitely a challenge, a test that helps define who you are. I’ve experienced nothing in life to match being a parent. Parenting demands more from you than you could ever have realized going in. At the same time, nothing has helped me grow more as a person than trying to teach my children how to be decent persons.

Let me just say that I love my children dearly. They are amazing human beings, and when everything is running well there is nothing in life finer than spending time with my family. Their potential is amazing, and I often envy their position of being young and having the world at their feet. Oh, to be young again while retaining the hard-earned experience of age. But it’s one of the ironies of life that at the time of your life when you have almost limitless opportunity you lack the perspective to really know what to do with it.

Of course one of the other ironies of life is that once you’ve attained the experience and perspective to know what to do with life you find yourself completely inadequate to the task of teaching what you’ve learned to those who could benefit from it most.

At one point in life I was going to be a music teacher. But, as I often explain, that all changed when I became a part-time teacher at a private school during my final college years. I suddenly found I didn’t want to be supervising kids, I wanted to be one of the kids.

Somehow I thought it would be different in having my own kids.

I’ve struggled as a parent. I’ve screwed up more times than I care to count. I’ve failed to be the parent I would like to be more often than I’ve succeeded. I’ve really got no clue what I’m doing. As the saying goes, the older I get the smarter my parents become. I’ve no idea how they did it, and I can’t help but wonder if they felt the same way when they were going through it.

But fortunately for all of us, I’m getting better. At least I think so. There have been times when I’ve finally had enough of my failings, pulled on my big-boy pants, and determined to to change. Perhaps I’ve not overcome those weaknesses entirely, but I’ve become better, I think.

That may be one of the beauties of the parent-child relationship. You’ll do things for your kids you’d never do for yourself, including change. I can live far too easily with the repercussions of my personal failings when it’s just myself. But seeing it effect my kids can be enough to finally move me to change. I’ll become a better person for them before I’ll become better for me.

I like to think I’ve made progress, that I’m a better person today than I was. If so, I have my kids, in large part, to thank for that. They deserve a better example than I’ve given them, but I’m trying.

Meanwhile time keeps slipping away. My kids are getting older. It won’t be long now before my daughter sets out on her own and I’ll only be able to hope we’ve taught her everything she needs to know. I’m not sure if, once you’ve begun being a parent, you ever get to stop worrying about them. But one thing is growing increasingly clear. I have to do my best to enjoy them while I’ve still got them.

I don’t write about my mom much. Not because I don’t love her, nor because it would embarrass her (it wouldn’t because she doesn’t read my blog to my knowledge). Certainly not because her influence is any less than my dad’s has been. If anything she’s been more of an influence in my life. She’s just been, perhaps, quieter about it. My mom has never sought the limelight–if anything attention makes her want to hide. Come to think of it, I probably got that from her, with just enough of a dramatic streak from my dad to allow me to enjoy performing.

But if there’s one thing I learned from my mom it’s that family comes first. Even when she had to work in order to help keep our family afloat it was just that–to keep our family afloat. She’s a good worker, and had she chosen to have a career she could have had a good one. Instead she garnered her reputation into flexible hours back when flex-time just wasn’t heard of. She spent years working late at night in an office by herself, not another soul in sight, because that is what worked best for allowing her to be home with her kids during the day. Her boss would rather let her do that than lose her.

Later when most of the kids were in school she was able to get another job with flexible hours that could mostly be worked while we were all in school, allowing her to get home before we did, or not long after.

If she ever felt like she’d missed out by focusing more on her family than having a career I never heard a word about it. Definitely not from her. I seldom heard her complain about working all day and then working most of the evening too to take care of kids and the household chores. It’s just what moms (and dads) do.

I’m not sure I’m as devoted as she was, but I still grew up getting the message loud and clear: parents take care of their kids and provide for them. That’s just what they do, and it doesn’t matter what they may have to give up in order to do that.

That wasn’t so earth-shaking a concept back then. Today, however, it seems as though kids are an accessory, as though when you get married you’re given an order form: “Please indicate if you would like to have children, pets, frequent exotic trips, or a large house. Select one, maybe two.” Kids are just another option, one you can outsource to someone else. Is it any wonder that children’s repect for their parents is rapidly decreasing?

How do you really, adequately thank a mother? You never really understand what a mother is, what a mother does, until you become a parent yourself. It goes far beyond 20,000+ meals prepared, thousands of loads of laundry, rides to school, loving care when you’re sick. Mothers are the very foundation of life that allows a child to begin to experience and explore the world around them. For a mother to be taken for granted is almost a requirement–if a child doesn’t feel safe and cared for at home, how can they possibly feel safe enough to take on the world outside?

Home was always a good, safe place to be while I was growing up. I never really appreciated the effort involved from both parents, but especially my mom, to make and keep it that way. It never occurred to me that my mom might want to spend her time on something other than keeping the household running and the kids from running wild. I never considered that there could be something more important for a woman to do.

Today the message is that pretty much anything is more important for a woman to do. But that’s not what my mother taught me. There was nothing more important to her than raising a good family. Though I’m not as good as she was at applying it, it’s still a lesson she passed on to me. Considering that the greatest happiness I’ve found in life has been with my own family, I’m pretty sure she was on to something. Thank you, Mom.

Last night we got together with family for the evening, and at some point the conversation came around to our dad and his tool collection. Someone to recently use those tools reported that some of them were downright scary to use, having been repaired, modified, and worn out. While I didn’t remember them being like that, I wasn’t the least bit surprised.

My dad was a product of his time, and he was…my dad. Born to poor dry-farmers (both my parents were raised on farms during the depression and WWII), he grew up learning to make do or do without. One didn’t throw out an otherwise functional circular saw just because the wiring had been nicked and exposed in a few spots. You put some electrical tape over them and you moved on–carefully. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of his tools were older than I am. Living cheaply was how my parents were raised, and it’s how they were able to raise us.

My dad was also something of a tinkerer. That may have been a side-effect of the frugality aspect, but he was never afraid to try things. If the university he worked for was throwing away some old fencing foils and badminton raquets he was able to see the potential and made us the world’s best marshmallow-roasting sticks. Rather than spend a lot of money to get a router table he just made his own. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked. I’d never use it, because I have no idea how it all went together, but he knew, and he made it work. He renovated our house, a freak of architectural design in its original form, into something a little more functional. He helped us build tree houses, zip-lines (WAAAAY before zip-lines were cool), and archery bows from fiberglass flag sticks and raquet-string.

He was braver with his patch-jobs and experiments than I’m inclined to be, but then none of us were ever injured, and he himself died of natural causes, so I suspect he knew what he was doing much more than we gave him credit for.

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m regularly reminded of my father’s impact on me, and it’s worth mentioning again (and again). I may be more cautious about things than he was, but his example leads me to at least try. I spent the last couple weekends mounting shelves in various rooms in our house. I didn’t have to call a handy-man. I didn’t even have to call my brother. I just did it, and it appears I did okay. And while I might have been able to do the whole project more cheaply buying it all from Ikea, we have our shelves exactly the way we we want them.

Raised by my father, I don’t consider this a big deal. This is what a man is supposed to do. This is what I teach my children to do. But now and then I’m reminded that not everyone is automatically taught these things. Yesterday I also spent some time with someone from our church helping them hang a mirror. The man I partner with for these visits and I knew immediately what to do and had it done in short order. I don’t fault the guy for not knowing how to do it himself. I was just reminded that we can no longer assume that everyone knows how to do these sorts of things. He knows now, and as I told him, there’s nothing like home ownership to teach you all sorts of skills. It’s amazing the number of skills I’ve learned simply because I don’t want to have to pay hundreds of dollars to get someone else to do it.

Not that I’m all that skilled, either. I’ve inherited a child’s cabinet built for my mother by her grandfather from the wood of a shipping crate. The workmanship blows the doors off of anything I’ve done. And my brother has built things that I can only marvel at. If the world goes to all to heck and we return to a barter economy he’s well-positioned to become the village carpenter. Maybe he’ll need an apprentice.

But I digress. This is about my father and what he taught me. I don’t recall him sitting me down and formally teaching me any of this, except for one time when he made me replace a faucet. I learned a lot by watching, and by helping. But perhaps the most important lesson was one he may not have even realized he was teaching, which is to not be afraid to try. Oh sure, we grew up wary of Dad and his experiments. But the older I get the more I suspect a lot of that was due more to what we didn’t know. I suspect he had a much better idea what he was doing than we realized. I suspect my kids are already developing a similar assessment of me and my improvisations.

Though a great deal of my handyman skill has been attained since I married and became a homeowner, and though my father never formally set out to teach me hardly any of it, I still credit him for raising me to believe it can be done, and that it’s worth a try.

My father has been gone for a while now, and it’s one of my many regrets that I never thanked him for teaching me to not be afraid to try. And while I’m of the belief that I’ll see him again and have that opportunity, it’ll still likely be a long time in coming yet. I do plan on having a nice long talk with him someday and thanking him for a lot of things. This is just the tip of the iceberg of all the things he taught me, and probably all the things I realize he taught me are only the part visible above the surface. Parents have a much bigger influence on their children than any of us ever really comprehend. What I am beginning to understand is that in the lottery of parents, I came out pretty darn well.