Why Dads Need To Be There (Late Christmas Commentary)

Yes, though the 12th day of Christmas is well behind us, I need to mention one last thing about that beloved season.  As, I suppose, a large swath of the the American populous does in December, we use our normal Friday Night Movie Night for Christmas movies.  Our #1 Doctor Who fan discovered that David Tennant (Doctor #10?) was in this Christmas movie: Nativity 2: Danger in the Manger and acquired it so we could be further impressed by Mr. Tennant.

BRIEF REVIEW
If you go in for highly improbable, deeply sentimental children's Christmas movies with a large dose of slapstick British humor (or should I say humour?), then this is for you.  Which, what is Christmas if not a story about the highly improbable and deeply sentimental?  Needless to say, our family does fit, given that we are either chronologically or mentally all still in our childhoods.  If you need to be impressed by taut story lines and brilliant acting, though, you will be disappointed.  This dichotomy is obvious when comparing the average reviews by average people (high end) to the average critical reviews (low end).

POINT OF THIS

Along with the fun and music - lots of quite singable music, even for me - Nativity 2 had a secondary theme about the influence of Dad's, highlighted in part by the strained relationship between the main character and his father.  But the real kicker, given my background, was this song plunked into the middle of things:

When I was a boy, I dreamed he'd find me

Fall down from the sky, to come and guide me

Take me by the hand of life and show me all he's learned…

Everybody's got a dad but me

Everybody's got a dad but me

I need a Dad to keep the demons from my door,

I need a Dad to stand beside me, 

Slay the dragons, fight my battles, help me win the war,

Show me what this heart inside me, 

is still beating for.

Now I am a man, I still dream he'll find me

Catch me if you can, the ties still bind me

Lead me down the rocky road, 

Show me who I am...

Everybody's got a dad but me

Everybody's got a dad but me

There are times when I think I have finally 'outgrown' that vague emptiness resulting from an absent father, then along comes a little reminder like this that I can't get out of my mind.  Two things usually result.  First, a sense of regret for that loss of relationship with my Dad.  Second, a renewed determination to do the very big job I have been assigned as father to my girls.  When they are watching Christmas movies years from now, I want them to smile at their memories of Dad.

Finished SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM

Go here for the review.  Yes, I would recommend it.

DIVERGENT, INSURGENT, ALLEGIANT

Should I or shouldn't I?

It is a hard to take seriously yet another dystopian power girl trilogy, which explains why I keep lapsing into calling the trilogy the 'Detergent' series, a habit I acquired even before I found out that Veronica Roth did. However, a couple of provoking blurbs in Redeemed Reader and World motivated me to give it a try.  That, along with one particularly enthusiastic teenage daughter who has a keen interest in power girl stories.  Plus, the Divergent movie is coming out soon.  *Pause for sound of interest level ratcheting even higher*

We have all three books -- acquired last year, mind you -- and I and daughter (and, apparently most of her friends) have read the first two books (Divergent, Insurgent).  There are thematic similarities with Hunger Games:  Determined Girl in Difficult times develops belief-defying Martial skills while fighting for survival in a chaotic future and at the same time navigating through the emotional maze of romantic entanglements.  The prevalence and market clout of this 'meme' just makes me wonder -- is this simply the escape genre of this generation of girls (I mean, do boys read these?) or does it reflect a deep-rooted expectation for what the future will be like?

Further commentary will have to wait until I have time to read 'Allergic', I mean Allegiant.  I am being nagged daily about it, because I have committed to finishing a grown up book first (The Seven Pillars of Wisdom - T.E. Lawrence).

HE'S WEIRD, SHE'S GRUMPY

Scene: Dad, Mom, daughter (#4) in kitchen.  After some typically odd behavior by Dad, this mirthful dialogue ensues.

Daughter: You're weird, Daddy.
Dad: Yes, it's a wonder that your mother married me.
Mom: He tricked me.
Dad: She thought I was normal.
Mom: He thought I was nice.
Dad: But, we still love each other.
*hug*

I never even saw my Dad and Mom together, let alone say anything good, bad, or indifferent to each other.  So, I am thankful for these unplanned moments where playful banter makes the bonds of affection in our marriage visible to our children.  Because, Lord Knows, there are other times when they see all too clearly our flaws...

Thankful for… a Doughnut?

Modern Manna for the famished office worker

It is another New Year and I am recycling my annual commitment to be more thankful for my blessings large or small and to be less disgruntled with, for example, government shutdowns that disrupt family vacations.  (O.K., letting go of that…)

Last Friday, I neglected to set my alarm, so I woke up 20 minutes later than my highly-regimented morning dictates.  Friday is a running day, so I had to weigh the option of cutting my run short versus skipping breakfast, neither of which were very appealing.  But, life is about choices, as I so often remind my children to their deep gratitude.  I chose to run.  In the back of my mind, a faint hope flickered that maybe someone would bring food into the office.  This happens quite often in the December holiday season, but almost never in the post-Christmas reality-check month of January.  So, perhaps it was less a hope than wishful thinking, or even a faintly desperate prayer.

To compensate for missing breakfast, I tossed an extra apple in my backpack on the way out the door.  Still, by midmorning my apple was gone, my ritual 10 o'clock banana was gone, and my stomach was growling.  At precisely my moment of fainting hunger (play dramatic music here), one of my coworkers came around with a nearly empty box of doughnuts.  Apparently someone from the department next to our I.T. group had brought some in for their peeps and there were a few extra.

There are a lot of bad things you can say about the nutritional benefits of doughnuts.  But, to a man fainting with hunger, it was like manna in the wilderness (a wafer that tasted like honey, Exodus 16:31).  That lovely, puffy, round yeast donut sprinkled lightly with cinnamon sugar tasted marvelous, eased my gnawing hunger, and got me through until lunchtime.  So, on the list of things I am thankful for in 2014, I am putting one, fresh cinnamon sugar doughnut.

Simple Living and Literature

There are lots of blogs out there about simple living.  They cover everything from getting rid of stuff you don't need to living off the grid.  Some advocates seem just a little too serious about it, almost reverential, as if simple living actually produces a utopia of earthly living.  Truth be told, 72 ideas for simplifying seems an oxymoron.  However, raising children simply is a matter of sanity in our small house with 2 people per bedroom and ALL THEIR STUFF.  My better half, however, prefers to have two of everything -- in case one breaks.  So, how to keep her anxiety about the need for backup appliances and kitchen ware at a minimum, while also reducing the number of devices?  Still working on that.  And how to convince my children that their valuables are mostly an odd assortment of junk that they will forget about in 6 months?  Still working on that, too...

Well, truth be told, I have my own simplicity battle to fight.  And that is with books.  I haven't found a way to leave the 'Friends of The Library' used book section of our local library without SOMETHING.  There is always at least one book I really want.  Today, it was not one, but three books.  Total cost was so low ($5 - and that included a $2 tip!) that I was helpless to resist my book rescue impulse.  But where am I going to put them?  Don't know yet.

I moved a whole bookcase and two storage boxes of books to the garage in December, and I am already on track to defeat that effort by the end of this year.

It all comes down to value.  Booklovers understand exactly my dilemma.  You know who you are: with your stacks in the hallway and your bookcases where every shelf has a 'secret' row of books due to chronic 'double-parking' to make use of all available space.  Somehow, someday, I will have to face the reality of sorting my books into two groups: the one's my children will want when I am gone, and the ones that will go into the recycle bin.

But, I don't think I can do it.  Severing so many connections with so many pleasant hours in other worlds and places would be painful.  On second thought, I'll just leave it for the girls. 

A Year For Friendship

As the high school literature tutor for the daughter we have in ninth grade, I toured through selections of Aristotle's ETHICS this past week, including his thoughts on friendship.  Some snippets from Book 8:

"… without friends no one would choose to live, even though he possessed every other good."  

"Perfect friendship is the friendship of people who are good and alike in virtue; 

                for they are alike in wishing each other's good…"

"Those who wish the good of their friends for their friends' sake are in the truest sense friends."

"Friendships of this kind are likely to be rare; for such people are few."

(Aristotle: On Man In The Universe, Classics Club edition, Louse Ropes Loomis, editor).

As I pondered my New Year -- what to prioritize, what to jettison -- Aristotle brought friendship into focus.  Specifically, I began to think of those handful of people who are virtuous, who wish my good simply for my sake, who are true friends, who are gifts to my life that make it worth living:

"My friends have come to me unsought.  The great God gave them to me."   

ESSAY VI Friendship - Ralph Waldo Emerson  (http://www.emersoncentral.com/friendship.htm)

The question that came foremost was: Have I reciprocated?  Am I the friend that others value for the good I wish them and the love I give without reserve?  Do others see me as a gift?  Or, am I the weaker brother in constant need of stronger companions?   

No, this is not me trolling for reassurance, rather it is simply the expression of the desire I have this year to renew in myself that virtue I see in my dearest friends, so well explained in these words by the one who lived them best:

"Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends."  

(Jesus, shortly before his crucifixion.  John chapter 15, verse 13, New International Version)