Too disctracted to write...

There will be no new post today. I think my wife is coming down with something so she's staying in bed while I supervise the torture of the children this morning. Our sadistic regimen includes such horrors as requiring them to get dressed, hard labor in the form of a few household chores, brain-washing by school-work, you get the idea. It's cruel and unusual I know, by that's what you have to do to maintain order under a tyranny.

Thank who...

My wife and I put together an event for the homeschool group a couple of weeks ago. There was girly stuff for the girls and video games for the guys.

Afterward, while we were eating lunch, a young man approached our table. I had just met the boy and didn’t know him at all. He came as the guest of one of our regulars. His question was, “Who do I need to thank for today?” These words coming from the lips of a teenage boy stunned me. When I regained my senses, I accepted his gratitude for my part in the day’s activities.

He went his way and I went mine, but the shock of it clung to me after. The good manners he displayed were so far removed from the coarse behavior I expect from kids his age. I know how I was a teen, how my peers were. A fifteen-year-old going to the trouble to find out whom, specifically, to thank, has something of the feel a fairy tale come to life.

Thanksgiving is a national holiday established for the purpose of gratitude. I can’t convey how really great an idea this is. Thanksgiving begs two questions. What are we thankful for? Most people remember that. The other, though, is whom are we thankful to? This is what that young man surprised me with.

Tomorrow millions of Americans will sit down to a meal with family and friends and begin to express thanks. My family is Christian. Our thanks is directed toward God. We call this ‘counting our blessings’. What about those who do not share my beliefs? Isn’t there a logical gap there that needs filling?

The definitions I read for gratitude made it sound like an emotion, something you could feel without directing it to toward a person. The problem with that is, to be thankful, you must feel like something was done for you. I don’t thank a dog for good behavior and I don’t thank a car for good performance. I do thank my wife or the cashier at Wal-Mart or the traffic cop who writes a warning instead of a ticket. They have done something for me. It is personal. Thanks is personal.

Gratitude for things not done by a person must be directed some place else. A farmer, grateful for a good crop, must express that gratitude toward the one responsible. A mother, just missed by a reckless driver, must thank a providence she cannot see.

Providence’s proper title is God. Be grateful to God for those happy accidents. If not, know that gratitude is foolish since no person really helped you at all. That’s the logical conclusion of denying God’s hand.

What we all need to remember is what the young man at our homeschool group expressed. To whom do we owe our thanks? Consider the source of the good things in life. Whom do you need to thank?

An Unfortunate Impulse...

We were driving up the highway a few days ago when one of the kids asked about sarcasm. I can't remember how the conversation started. Who knows how these things start. The question was put to me. "Dad, what's sarcasm?"

At this point, a wiser man than I would see where this was headed and end things before they got out of hand. Me? I have this delusion that when a child asks a question it is because of a genuine deficiency of knowledge and it is my job to supply it. Oh yes, I think, I can answer that for you my son. Behold, I have the very nugget of understanding you've been seeking. Be comforted by the abundance of my accumulated factoids.
This impulse to awe the masses goes way back. I remember taking rides in the car as a child and trying to bait my sister into asking me questions so I could have the pleasure of answering her.

So, when one of the kids asks a question, there's this impulse that drives me to answer. It's like a force of nature, a pontification instinct. "Sarcasm," I said, "is when you say one thing, but mean another. You use it for emphasis."

Bear in mind, my children are all under ten. According to accepted psychological standards, they are incapable of anything but concrete thought:

"Cognitive development refers to the development of the ability to think and reason. Children (6 to 12 years old) develop the ability to think in concrete ways (concrete operations) such as how to combine (addition), separate (subtract or divide), order (alphabetize and sort), and transform (change things such as 5 pennies = 1 nickel) objects and actions. They are called concrete because they are performed in the presence of the objects and events being thought about."
-- From an article on the Lucile Packard Children's Hopital at Standford

In other words, children under twelve only understand things they can see, touch, hear, taste or feel. They are the ultimate existentialists. This is why they struggle to communicate emotions. They can only explain how being sad or angry makes their body feel. To say one thing and mean another is not difficult to understand, it's impossible.

Children tell lies, but they know they are lying and they mean to convey the exact information they give, even if it is untrue. My children couldn't grasp the idea that you might say a thing that is untrue and mean the thing that is.

So I began to explain. In my defense, my wife helped with this part.

"If I go to the refridgerator and bring mommy back a Diet Pepsi, and she says, 'Thanks, I love Diet Pepsi.' Does she really love Diet Pepsi?" (imagine me investing exaggerated contempt into the phrase)

The children, who know we prefer 'the red can' as they call Coke to all others, answer "No, she doesn't like Diet Pepsi."

"So, why did she say that?"

"Because she doesn't want to hurt your feelings."
"Because she might like it she's never tried it."
"Because it's what you got her and if she doesn't like it she can get her own."

Concrete answers. It never even occurs to them that mommy was insincere in her statement. Never. The rapid fire answers were all based on the firm conclusion that she said exactly what she meant to say.

Just as I'm about to launch into another example and attempt to explain this abstract concept, my wife looks at me. She's out. I can tell by the look in her eyes. She's not going any further with this. Why, I think? We can explain this. We're smart. We can break it down for them.

Then the epiphany strikes me as well.

I am teaching my children to be sarcastic. I have a five-second horror show in my head of the sharp-tongued teenagers these kids will grow up to be. They are quite articulate now. Another five or ten years and straight answers will be a thing of the past. WHAT AM I DOING?!?

"Dad...?" they ask. They are waiting for me to re-engage. I stifle the pontification response. I suppress the teaching reaction.

"Let's talk about something else." Mom quickly supplies a new topic and we're off again, swerving away from the verbal doom I had steered us toward. Maybe I've learned my lesson. Maybe. I'm morbidly curious what it will be like when they do grasp this unattractive concept. They could all become brilliant satirists. More likely they will simply lampoon my every attempt to teach them anything after the age of fourteen.

But hey, that's life for a parent, right?

My new favorite book...

     I was wrong. There. I said it. I thought that great English literature would be as difficult to read as other great works I have read. The Count of Monte Cristo was excellent but it was work to read. Well, it was French after all. Dante’s Inferno was hard to follow, well worth it, but I had to go slow and use a dictionary half the time.

     So when my wife recommended Charles Dickens I resisted for a while. Not that I didn’t want to have such an important English writer under my belt, but I was preparing myself mentally to slog through pages of difficult prose and literary imagery.

     I was wrong. I borrowed a copy of A Tale of Two Cities on CD from my sister and I’ve been listening to it the last week and a half. I love it. Let me be clear. This is one of the best books I have ever read. I don’t mean best in the English Major’s sense of the word. I mean it is actually enjoyable.

     From the first sentence, I was hooked. Dickens has it all. The language is beautiful and he wields it so effectively to create images and moods. His settings and characters are perfect. The story has a depth you can get into and swim around in. I’m almost finished with it and I’m already thinking about when I’ll read it again.

     My wife, as I’ve alluded to, has already read a couple of books by Dickens and she’s told me he’s good. I didn’t know. People say books are good all the time. I trust her judgment, but labeling a book a classic can be the death of that book for popular fiction readers. I have no doubt anyone willing to give it a shot will be delighted by what they find in this excellent book.

     Needless to say, I’ll be trying a few other Dickens books in the future. As antagonistic as I’ve been toward French writing, it feels good to be vindicated by one who is a master of my own language. I’m sure this won’t be the final word on this particular book, but for now, enjoy a little hero worship of Dickens and my ringing endorsement of A Tale of Two Cities.

Train in Morality

Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.

--Paul of Tarsus in a letter to the Christian Church at Ephesus

Sometimes as a father I feel the burden to prepare my kids for the ‘real world’. Usually this line of reasoning takes me into some moral gray zone where I start trying to justify lying or fighting or some other such thing. The truth is, God has given us righteousness as a breastplate and faith as shield to protect us from whatever may come at us in the ‘real world’.

If a child is trained from birth to know x, y, and z are wrong and that a, b, and c are right, he will remember these rules all his life. Even when he is of a rebellious age, it will be very clear what he is rebelling against and in what direction he must go to defy these rules.

If, instead, a child is given no guidance, if he is told not to talk about certain things like sin and morality because he may offend some people (usually those people who practice sin and prefer immorality for some reason), if he is taught that a thing is sometimes wrong and sometimes right, he will be lost. He will have no touchstone by which to test his choices.

Such a child is not beyond hope by any means. Every man is born with a conscience. But it is harder to find studs in a wall with a stud finder than it is to mark them while the sheetrock is off and they are plain to see.

What happens when you bring the stud finder to a wall so difficult to penetrate that it becomes unreliable? How then do you choose where to drive the nail? Eventually, things descend into a guessing game where nail after nail is driven until finally something solid is struck. This exercise leaves the laborer exhausted and the wall devastated. How much more do we see exhaustion and devastation as the results of thrashing around in moral ambiguity, trying every likely possibility and retrying when those fail.

Contrast that with the man who knows where to find the studs under the plaster. He knows because the one who built the house has shown him exactly where each one is. Such a man will not, if he is wise, waste energy where there is nothing solid to strike. Again, so it is in life. Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain.

We do our children no good service when we fail to mark the boundaries between good and evil. This is the purpose of morality. It is not only to please God, which it does, but to shelter us from the storms of this fallen world. It is to keep us safe, whole and in our right mind until our savior can rescue us.

Father’s do not forget to pass on these lessons along with all the other gifts you give. Do not fail to preserve your own integrity. Keep it. Protect it. It is a sacred trust intended for generations yet unseen. May it pass through our hands unharmed.

By the way, the idea for today's post came from a post by wife. To preserve her ideas my my sticky fingers, she has started her own blog. 4 Ever Learning. Check it out when you get a chance.

An Overlooked Genre

I love books. I love long books and short books, I love scary books and sweet books, I love fiction books and fact books, I love funny books and action books and thoughtful books. This  has been true as long as I've been able to read. As a kid I could wear out a Dr. Seuss book in no time.

For a while, as I grew up, I forgot about children's books. I went on a sci-fi fling followed by a fantasy binge. I took a short break to get married and have kids and now I'm back to heavy reading. But with the advent of children has come a resurgence in my love for childish books.

I don't think I ever stopped liking them, I just stopped reading them. According to a recent article by the New York Times, this is exactly what is happening to kids across the country now. As parents feel the pressure to prepare their kids for rigorous school standards (see that pesky institutional school ruining another good thing?) they are pushing their early elementary kids out of picture books and into chapter books. Never mind that the text is equivalent or below the picture book's level. It doesn't have pictures so it must be bigger. Right?

Wrong. C.S. Lewis said, "A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest." In other words, any book that a child is expected to enjoy should be enjoyable for an adult. I have found this to be true. For one example, I have already shared Axe Cop, the webcomic written by a six-year-old. This work comes directly from a child's mind, yet it is captivating readers of all ages. Also, in my own case, I have found that I pick out the books I like, when I go to the library. The kids have their favorites, but some how one or two of my own favorites end up in the stack.

Or they used to. When I read the article I was cut to the heart because even I have begun to follow this pattern. My oldest is only nine. My youngest is four and it would be perfectly ok for her to be read picture books daily. Yet, as I've gotten more preoccupied with doing a good job homeschooling, I've pushed higher-level books on the kids. Some of it is an impatience to share what I love, but some of it is the stereotype that books with pictures are for babies.

The truth is there are many books released in over sized format with lush illustrations that contain fifth-grade level text or higher. They discuss themes, explain concepts and inform worldviews that adults are still learning about.

But even with all that aside, children's picture books are fun. They are witty and delightful and I have never failed to laugh at a well made one. My favorites include the Pigeon books by Mo Willems, just about anything by Jon Scieszka, and David Shannon. I still enjoy the 'classics' by Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein.

The idea that children's books are beneath anyone is ridiculous. We would be wise to stop trying to outgrow childhood, but rather carry what is good about it with us to keep us joyful and humble. One final quote from C.S. Lewis and I let it go.

"Those of us who are blamed when old for reading childish books were blamed when children for reading books too old for us. No reader worth his salt trots along in obedience to a time-table."

A Purple Apology

The weblog has grown stagnant of late. The author apologizes for his neglect. He is a man of good intentions and poor attendance. However, it is his latest good intention to return to the thrice-weekly schedule he has previously maintained. This wielder of words with bring back the power of his prose to stir vivacity back into the idle blog and make it Vivid once again.

What I Love About Homeschooling: The School of Life

You’re walking through the Wal-Mart when it happens. You turn down an aisle and you see kids hanging off a cart. They’re not preschoolers, the oldest could be ten or eleven. It’s not the weekend. Maybe a holiday? But, your own kids or grandkids are in school right now. No holiday or teachers’ in-service.

So what are these kids doing in the middle of the store in the middle of the day in the middle of the week? They homeschool.

Homeschoolers get out. One of the myths about homeschooling is that kids are stuck at home learning in a vacuum where nobody will interact with them. Do some people do this? Yes. Do most people do this? No. Most homeschool families have an itinerant schedule that turns a minivan into a NASCAR contender.

One of the things I love about homeschooling is the places we go. We’ve been schooling for about three years now. In that time we’ve been to:

• the St. Louis Science Center
• the St. Louis Zoo (many times)
• the Cincinnati Museum Center (includes the Natural History, History and Childrens’ Museum)
• the Mt. Vernon Register printing press
• the butterfly round-up at Crab Orchard
• the encampment at Fort Massac
• The Magic House (St. Louis)
• Cahokia Mounds
• Do I need to keep going?
• a pizza parlor
• a dairy farm
• Jefferson County Historical Village
• Franklin County Historical Jail Museum
• Illinois State Police barracks

I’m going to stop. The point is the words ‘field trip’ have lost all meaning. This is just a part of school for us. We don’t just talk about things and look at the pictures. If there’s a place they can go to look and touch, we’ll be scheduling a visit. The local Homeschool Group has been a big help in this. Most places are glad to invite children in and teach them about what they do. A larger group, with parents along to supervise, can make that possible.

The thing is, a lot of these places I had never been to. These kids are going places at six or seven that I’m just now seeing at twenty-eight. You can talk about the world all you want, but there’s no substitute for going out into it.

Our kids often tag along for trips to the grocery store, the hardware store, the bank, and more. A couple of days ago, my youngest son and daughter helped me pick out underwear for their mother on a quick shopping trip. It was only slightly awkward. (look dad this kind says ‘smooth’ and it looks smooth. Yes son those are nice.) This is real life for us, it can be for them too.

Do we do the table work, the worksheets and writing practice? Yes. We are, as a rule, very busy. From the time we get up in the morning to the time we go to bed at night, we are doing something. This is what I love about homeschooling. It is so much more than school at home. It is the school of Life.

Using the Princesses.

A little girl is cute. She looks like a living doll romping around in skirts and ponytails. One moment she is mimicking the tenderness of a mother with a baby doll in her arms. The next minute, she is upbraiding the dog for its considerable sins.

My own daughter is all too aware of the power of her cuteness. She has always been able to land herself in the lap or on the hip of a teacher. For a child of one or two years, this isn’t that big of a deal. She passed the four year mark many months ago and she still has the knack of insinuating herself into places no four-year-old should be able to go. This is partly because she is quite petite for her age, but it has more to do with the fact that she sees herself as irresistible. After all, who wouldn’t want to hold her and give her everything she asks for?

From the beginning, we have tried to keep our daughter from seeing herself as only a pretty thing. We have constantly found ways to compliment her that are not based on her appearance, but on her character. Yet, she still cannot pass a mirror without being captivated and if you don’t notice what she is wearing today she will surely bring to your attention.

Like many girls in this modern age of marketing, my daughter is obsessed with the Disney Princesses. She sleeps beneath them at night. She wears their clothes. She listens to their music. She begs to watch their movies. She wants to be like them. In her four-year-old heart, she is one of them. These are her heroes.

We have resisted this as much as we can. My wife wasn’t that kind of girl when she was little. It is hard for us to understand. Yet our own girl is exactly the kind. She loves pink and wants to be pretty all day long. How do you fight something that is so ingrained? She wants to be a princess. Of course she’s obsessed with clothes and expects to be waited on hand and foot. All she needs is a ball gown and a prince and she’ll be set for life. But, is it possible there are other lessons to be gleaned from these iconic Disney debutants?

My wife thought of it. Enlist the princesses. Recruit them to our cause. In one of those teachable moments we read about in books, she began to discuss some of the things she had noticed about the princesses with our daughter. Cinderella was kind to others and a very hard worker (that front hall blings in every scene). Belle is a big reader who makes good use of the library. Snow White was fair and took care of others. Pocahontas respected nature. Ariel saved a drowning man. Mulan was brave. (Yes, I know Mulan is not a princess, but she is female lead in a Disney animated film, therefore she qualifies in my daughter’s eyes.)

The more we talked about it the more we could draw out the virtues we wanted to teach from these heavily marketed hussies. I don’t think there is much we can do to keep my daughter from being vain. Even now, if you ask her about her modesty, she will go through her pockets, look behind her and then throw up her hands and say she hasn’t got any. She doesn’t even know the meaning of the word. Time will heal this, thought, and there really isn’t anything wrong with being pretty, which she is. But, maybe we can teach her to be a whole lot more. After all, she’s not afraid to climb a tree or brawl like an animal with her brothers. I think in her heart she’s really a warrior princess.

Well, I failed to keep my Tu Th Sat schedule last week. My wife says the Tuesday post was good enough to carry me, and it did get a few extra hits, but I'll try to get back on schedule. In the mean time, if you don't see a new post when you expect one, imagine me lecturing a child or whizzing down a hillside on a homemade go-kart. That's probably what I'm doing instead of writing. Thanks for paying attention to me anyway.

Homeschool and the Education Cop

We got an e-mail a couple of weeks ago about truancy officers turning up at the homes of local homeschool families. In the state of Illinois, homeschools are essentially private schools. They have the all the same rights and privileges of any other educational institution. A truancy officer inquiring of a homeschool family is akin to a highway patrolman pulling over motorists for no real reason.

So, with this in mind I decided to compile a short list of suggestions in case the “education cop” comes knocking on your door.

1. Fight fire with fire.
   

   Truancy officers are primarily a product and functionary of bureaucracy. Take the officer’s name, title, agency, contact information, shoe size, favorite color, and American Idol pick. Promise to pass this information to the superintendent just as soon as he gets back and tell the officer to expect a call in two to five business days.

2. Use a prearranged signal to tip the children off.
   

   Approximately forty-five seconds after answering the door, a child should shriek like a burning cat. Apologize and explain you’ve been studying the Spanish Inquisition and you really need to go take care of that. (Don’t forget to lock the door. This sends the correct message that you don’t need any help.)

3. Dig a Burmese tiger pit. Don’t forget to warn the mailman.
   
4. Try to convert them.
   

   It is very difficult to talk about why the kids aren’t enrolled in school when someone is adamantly wielding the Sword of the Spirit to the edification of your everlasting soul. Use this to your advantage. If you are not Christian, that’s okay, borrow a bible from a Christian friend or order one from Amazon.

5. Grill the officer on state and capital names, the American presidents, English grammar, spelling, multiplication tables, etc. For greatest effect keep score and give prizes to the child (or officer) who wins.
   
6. Tell them you are in the middle of a class, but your office hours are from four to five, Monday through Friday.
   
7. Duct tape the officer to the wall while the kids explain the Law of Gravity and other applicable principles.
   
8. Cast the officer as Polonius in the HS Group production of Hamlet.
   
9. Ask if the kids may interview them for a report on Government in Action (subtitled Freedom: What makes America great.
   
10.  Don’t worry about it because you weren’t home when the officer came by. You were at the lumber yard buying project supplies,
    at the newspaper office, dairy farm, history museum, wildlife refuge center, or police station on a field trip,
    at music lessons, soccer practice, book club, co-op classes, 4-H, or just taking a nice walk in the park because you only need one-hundred eighty days of school a year and you schooled through the summer so you could enjoy  a really beautiful day when one came along.

Please add your suggestion to the list.

Epic Perseverance

He jumps. One day he will be famous for that gravity-mocking jump. Right now, he’s not worried about fame. He doesn’t know why he can jump so high. He doesn’t care. He concentrates on using this new-found talent to clear the big lizard with the heels of his boots. He comes down on the flashing switch at the monster’s back. Some laborer’s instinct tells him this is the lynch pin, the thing holding the bridge together. His feet smash it, letting the bridge behind him collapse. The lizard falls too, plummeting with a cartoonish laziness.

     He doesn’t look back to watch. He hears the clak-clak-clak of the bridge coming down and knows he has won. Instead of gloating, which isn’t his nature anyway, he takes a few deep breaths. He lets his pounding heart slow down. His cap trembles in his hand as he removes it to run his fingers through his thick, dark hair.

     It’s over. That’s all that matters. He’s rescued the girl, that pretty blonde he’d met years ago. The day is saved and maybe they can live in peace for a while.

     He wonders if he can really live here in her strange country with her. He doesn’t know if he can. This place, where rust-colored stones pave every bit of the ground, unsettles him. The conical grassy hills that rise from it remind him of burial mounds.

     His mind wanders back to the even more disturbing things he’s encountered. He thinks of the mushroom he ate that made him grow like Alice in her Wonderland adventure. He thinks of the bricks that hang, suspended by nothing but as solid as any masonry he’d ever seen.

     Still, he had been able to topple a few with the new strength his increased size gave him. Others had not yielded even to that. Instead, they had given up treasure, mostly copper coins, bright and flashing and as big as his head. A few had held stranger treasures; there were the Wonderland mushrooms that made him grow, there was a large-blossomed flower that gave him power over fire, there was a rare star-shaped amulet that wreathed him in a protective aura.

     And he had needed the protection. In this world there were monsters. He’d faced terrible hybrid animals that hadn’t seemed aggressive at first, but had proven deadly when engaged. There was a breed of tortoise spliced with some kind of raptor. The product was an armored beast with a sharp, tearing beak. He’d learned to dodge the mouth and strike the crown of the shell but the lesson had been costly.

     He feels calmer now. The darkness is hot and oppressive inside the castle, but he has mastered it. He has beaten the guardian and now he stands, catching his breath in the inner rooms of this evil den. Not bad work for a common union plumber. He is no prince charming, short and swarthy as he is, but he can get a job done right.

     He snugs his hat back into place. It is a brilliant scarlet thing that is impossible to miss, even in this gloom. The bright, vivid colors were his father’s doing. His father had told them, him and his brother, that to be successful they must be memorable. His own mother had sewn the first set of vibrant uniforms.

     Sometimes he thinks the bright clothes make him look like a gypsie, especially with his darker, Mediterranean complexion. But, people remembered his name and the brothers had always stayed busy before they’d come to the strange country he was in now.

     He has one more thing to do. He enters the long, narrow chamber on this side of the chasm he fought to cross. His eyes fall on a writhing sack on the bare floor.

     They stuffed her in a sack! His love, his princess, tied up like potatoes in a feed bag!

     He looses the knot binding the neck of the sack and pushes the rough canvas away. Instead of the spill of pink satin and blonde hair he expects a large, spotted toadstool tumbles out. The toadstool stands up on tiny legs and blinks at him. an expression both grateful and apologetic is on its face.

     He recognizes the creature. It is one of her people, one of her subjects. To love her is to love them. But, he can’t hide his disappointment. He misses her and his fear is mounting the longer she stays lost.

     “Thank you,” says the toadstool, “but our princess is in another castle.”

     Tears leak from his eyes, frustration and fear spilling out. His nerves are raw, his limbs exhausted. He only nods and leaves by the door at the back of the room.

     When he is outside again he stares at the alien landscape for a long moment. A dark shape smudges the horizon. It is a castle. Another castle.

     “Our princess is in another castle.”

     He thinks of the three levels of Hell he has already descended to get here; the weird stone-paved plains, the cavern with it’s shifting platforms and pitfalls, the weird forest canopy of flat-topped trees. He thinks of the castle full of fiery traps and nightmare creatures.

     He pushes the clutter of anxieties out of his mind. His resolve firms into an iron-clad perseverance. He will find her. He will rescue her. He loves her and will not abandon her. He will fight his way to the next castle, through the next castle and the next and the next. He will follow her to the end of all worlds and fight the king of all monsters if it means he can see her once more.

     He leaves the rust-colored ramparts behind and sets out for the distant horizon. A wicked mushroom creature with baleful eyes sidles toward him. He jumps. He brings his heavy steel-toed boots down, smashing the ill-fated monster flat.

     He will go. He will fight.

His princess is in another castle.

Taste.

We took a field trip on Monday.

We got up early and loaded the kids in the car and drove South down Illinois 127 to Rendleman Orchards. The drive to the orchards is a little more than an hour if we don’t get lost. Sometimes we do.

We pass the time ooh-ing and aah-ing at the bright, jewel-toned trees we pass, golden and ruby and emerald. We sing songs. We watch for items on our scavenger list; a point for seeing a tractor or an unusual mailbox. We saw no less than four Large-mouthed Bass mailboxes.

At the orchard we browse the delicious smelling wares and select a peck of Fuji apples and a couple of bottles of cider.

The apples are magnificent. If you have never eaten an apple directly from the orchard, make the drive. Nothing you can buy in a grocer’s will compare with the fresh and flavorful fruit of a local producer. Try the Fuji apples. They are in season right now and a personal favorite of mine.

We turn back north a few miles to explore the Pamona Natural Bridge. We see more brilliant plumage on the trees. We hike back to see the arch of stone formed by erosion. Frogs surprise us and one toad tolerates a gentle handling for us.

Another, longer drive eventually takes us back to Murphysboro and the 17^th Street Bar & Grill. Mike Mills’ award-winning ribs do their magic on us and the entire family falls upon the feast with gusto.

I ate too much. I freely confess it. There’s a part of me that always exalts a little in good food. I might be a hedonist or a glutton, but I will praise God in heaven for the Fuji apple and the Smoked Beef Brisket. I hold them up, exhibits A and B, that the world was made to be a paradise. There is still a lot to enjoy, to savor in it. “Taste,” says the Psalmist, “and see that the Lord is good.”

Because we are different...

We have a rule at our house. The rule is ‘no guns’. We own no toy guns despite having three boys that are as rowdy and aggressive as ever a man-child was. We have this rule because I don’t want them pretending to kill each other. That’s not a game.

Perhaps I am being too serious about it. Perhaps. It’s my house though. It’s my rule.

My children say, “What about hunting?”

If you believe in reincarnation then believe my children were trial lawyers in a previous life. If you don’t, then understand that my children are like all others in Western Civilization. They like to argue, so they ask about hunting.

“That’s true,” I say. “If you want to pretend to hunt with rifles and shotguns, you could. Do you want to play with toy rifles or toy pistols?”

I explain that pistols are hand guns.

They say, “We want toy pistols.”

I say, “I know.”

Now it’s October and it’s time for another hard decision. Halloween has been heavily marketed, like most holidays, toward kids. Each year my wife and I have grown more uncomfortable with the grisly displays that captivate and creep out our children when we go to the store. Skeletons, zombies and ghosts lurk in every Wal-Mart. Horrific movie posters decorate the windows of video stores.

I know that my kids don’t have to dress up like monsters and murderers. They could wear any number of innocent costumes. It would still be Halloween. It is the season for haunted houses and horror movies. These things belong. We do not.

I don’t know when vampires and witches became the good guys. I do know I have to draw the line somewhere. I’d rather not eat a brownie at all than eat a turd by mistake if there’s a chance of a mix up. I think in this case, there is a chance.

Maybe I’m sheltering them. In fact, I know I am. It’s my job. If I’m wrong, they can have all the Halloween fun they want when they grow up and leave home. They will be little the worse for wear, I think. We can play dress up any day of the week and candy is always in season. I see no reason to observe a holiday that is the traditional night of the deathly, the macabre and the nightmarish. Rather, I will take a pass. Let it be another day on the calendar like Bastille Day or Yom Kippur.

"Dear friend, do not imitate what is evil but what is good."
John the Beloved in a letter to his friend, Gaius ~ A.D. 90

Naptime

     “That’s my stick!”

     “No it isn’t!”

     “Yes it is!”

     “You’re stick is over there!”

     “No it’s not!”

     “Yes it is!”

     Abel made a grab for the stick in his brother’s hand. He was rewarded with a hard stroke across his ear. His shriek of pain and anger filled the little cave. It crashed off every hard surface and shattered the last of his mother’s patience.

     “That’s it!” She gritted her teeth, closed her eyes. Some of the scream went out of her voice. “That is it! You two have done nothing but argue all morning—Cain!”

     She pierced the boy with her glare.

     “Put the stick down. Now.”

     The thing clattered to the floor.

     Eve seized each of the boys by an arm and marched them deep into the warm interior of the cave. She stopped at a pile of blankets and animal skins heaped at the back.

     She settled them on the pile, arranging them where they couldn’t touch each other. She looked down upon them and uttered words that would ring throughout history in the mouths of exhausted mothers everywhere.

     “It’s nap time.”

---

     I don’t know whether Eve really invented naptime or not. I do know she had two boys and I doubt that famous incident that ended with Abel dead was their first argument. At some point, it had to occur to her that a break in the middle of the day might be a good idea. Kids get tired.

     When I was in Kindergarten, they still made us take naps after lunch recess. I’m not sure if they still do or not. They should. My own kids have to take a break after lunch. I encourage those who can sleep to do so, although they all maintain that their not tired. Still, the four-year-old tends to fall asleep more days than not. Even the eight-year-old crashes sometimes when he was up late the night before or it has been a big morning.

     I wouldn’t mind a nap midday myself, although that’s a more unattainable dream than publishing a novel at this point. Gotta have priorities. I would never sleep if I didn’t have to, but when I’m tired my body can be quite insistent.

     Still, I think I will keep naptime an institution in my home until the kids are grown and leave. Everyone needs a little quiet time during the day, a time they are guaranteed some peace uninterrupted. Even a teenager’s life (especially a teenager’s life) is full of hectic activity and an hour to stop everything and read a book could mean a lot.

     We are very busy at our house and people ask how we handle four kids and the challenges of homeschooling. The truth is, putting the kids down for a nap is as much for us as for them. That is our chance to talk, to rest, to get ready for the rest of the day. It is an island of peace in a sea of chaos. If Eve did pioneer the childhood siesta then I applaud her. Many thanks O mother of us all.

Seriously!? Like a little child?

And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.      --Jesus of Nazareth circa 30AD

"Wait, what? I have to become like a child? But children are needy and selfish. Why do you want me to be like them? Adults are smarter. We know things. We can do things. We're autonomous. Give me a job and I can get it done. You don't have to micromanage me. I know you're busy. Just between us adults, those kids aren't exactly the best at doing a job, you know. There's a lot they miss. It's a big world. You need big people to take care of it."

"Yes, I heard what you said about being like a child but..."

"yes, but..."

"no, I don't really understand it."

"Yes I usually do understand things pretty quickly... "

"What do I think it means?... I don't know. I guess..."

"sorry, you're right, no guessing...um...kids have lots of faith, right? My kids take everything I say at face value. They really don't do subtle. I crack a joke, you know something witty and sarcastic--"

"Yeah, faith. They just sort of trust. It's genuine, too. Adults always hold something back when they trust, but kids will put it all out there."

"What else? Uh, I gue--  I mean, I think kids are preceptive. They see things as they really are, not as they want them to be or as someone else has told them. If what they're told doesn't match with what they see, there will be questions. Lots of questions."

"Thank you."

"What else? Man, I don't know. They love real purely. They tell the truth, they like to cuddle, they still know they need their Daddy most of the time, they..."

"What do you mean you think I'm getting it? What am I getting?"

"You? I need to love you like that? Trust you like that? You want my questions and my childish, not to be deceived faith, huh. But..."

"No but's. Fair enough."

"Well...love me back, please. I need you, too."

Autumn.

I love autumn. It is far and above my favorite season. It is a bittersweet love since I suffer from allergies annually, but it is a small price to pay for the best weather of the year. Autumn comes with harbingers for each of the senses. It is a sometimes gradual sometimes overnight transition. It is the dying of the earth and its death knell is beautiful.

One day, halfway through September I leave the house and air smells different. It is no longer the hot, green smell of growing grass and steaming leaves. Some if it is the harvest. Farmers gather in their crops and the disturbed soil and chaff flavor the air, cluing in my nose that autumn has arrived, even if the mercury in the thermometer hasn't been told yet.
I go about my business of the day and as I drive down the highway I am annoyed by the glare of the sun. It gleams from a low place in the sky, bright, but not so hot as a few weeks ago. The very quality of light has changed. The sun seems tired all of a sudden, tired and far away. Everything begins to look like fall.
Cicadas sing and frogs, a constant buzzing you can hear even in the towns. One day hot, another cold. A few days of rain and the temperature dips in the fifties. It won't go higher than eighty after that. Why? Because the weatherman says? No. I can feel it. There's a finality to it all. Summer is passing away.The winter king cometh and he sends his chilly heralds before him.


We know in the deepest part of us that all things die. But we have the certainty that next spring all things will live again. For now, we can enjoy the familiar smells, the long-awaited holidays the goodness of this season. We have a promise that the seasons will continue, each in their own time until the earth itself is no more. There's a peace in this. Maybe the autumn is practice, year after year, for our own death one day. We can have that peace, knowing there will be a new spring after our physical winter, too. Maybe not.

Whatever it means to you, it is upon you, without guile or subtlety. Brilliant scarlet and gold leaves will  greet us one morning and frost some morning after that. The autumn has arrived.

Daddy.

I knew from the beginning that I wanted to have a family. Wanting such a thing is like wanting to get married. All you know is what you see other people doing and you want what they have. You don't know how hard it can be even thought they tell you it's hard. You don't understand how great it can be, even though you can see it in their faces.

When we got married, I felt like I was coming alive all over again. It was like something that had been missing so long I'd forgotten about it was suddenly back. When we had our first born, the feeling returned. Something I didn't even realize was gone had returned to me.

Since then we've rounded out the fold to four children, wild and wonderful. Each of them is so different, but so intricately connected to each other. I wonder if I'll ever really know them or if I only just see the things they show me. A few days ago, that first born, the one that changed my life forever, lost a tooth. I came home from work and that tiny bit of sharp enamel was sitting on the desk. This one is the benchmark, the child by whom I mark my years as a father, and now he smiles with a gap in his lower row. I think, my God, it's going too fast. Mommy says it out loud so I don't have to, so I can just be strong and proud of him for being older.

He smiles a lot now, too. There was time when he didn't. Families are organic.They grow and change, usually for the better. It's hard sometimes, changing. Sometimes it's too hard. Maybe we were just being selfish, but I couldn't let them go. I decided to teach them myself rather than let them leave me for a faculty of strangers every day. We learn together, reading books, learning about science and history and everything. We go to the park. We go to the library. We build, laugh, learn and love. And I'm there. I can see it all. If they figure something out for the first time, I don't have to wait for them to tell me or to bring home a test paper a week later. I saw the moment they understood.

I play with them. Not as much as I should, but as much as I can. They delight in play. I am a hero. I have the golden touch of play. Whatever I want to play with them becomes the best game in the world. Frisbee, Catch, Lego, it doesn't matter. If nobody wants to color with the little one, I can. If I do, they all will. Suddenly coloring in a coloring book becomes great entertainment. They all show me what they've colored. I look and laugh and notice all the right details and they swell with pride. They won't remember this as an adult, but they'll remember I always loved them.

I got called a lot of names as a kid. Most slid off without hurting but not all. But now I get called something that is as commanding as it is respectful. It is a higher calling that's common as dirt. From the lips of my children it can be the most endearing term of affection. They call me Daddy.

I fixed the comment settings so anyone can comment now. Sorry for the trouble. Thanks Ash for letting me know I had a problem.