Posted on by jsmith

Happy Fathers Day to a Good and Important Man.

 

I just picked up a book by Harold Kushner called Living a Life that Matters. I’m only on page six but I’ll pretend to know what I’m talking about.  Up to page six, he discusses the basic human need to to believe we are important, and how that often clashes with another basic human need:  to believe that we are good.  I found this interesting and am anxious to see what happens beyond page six.  I cannot progress past page six, however, because my important+good husband has stolen the book from me and is reading it as I type.

This is a “quirk” (mass euphemism) of his:  I bring home books that I am excited about, tell him the premise, then spend the next week frantically looking for said book.  Unfailingly, said book is artfully placed in his car/under his side of the bed/between the couch cushions; anywhere I won’t see it for at least a few days.  I wail madly around the house–it was just here!–as Derrick mumbles something quietly and backpeddles to another room.  When, days later, I finally discover the precious book I swoop it up triumphantly, only to find my husband’s drivers license or a dollar bill stuck between two pages near the book’s end.  This tells me that a) he has, once again, stolen my book, and b) he has been reading it behind my back.  This reminds me that a) he shares some of my intellectual interests, and b) he is dishonest.

I’ll take b if it means I get a.  Some might call it settling.  I call it choosing my battles.  (Mass euphemism.)

So while my husband sits on the couch downstairs, reading about living a better life from the book he ripped off, I sit at my keyboard musing over why he’s an important and good father:

  • He tries his hardest at everything he does.  Important
  • He shows his kids how to try their hardest, too.  Good.
  • He shows integrity in everything he does outside our home.  Important.
  • He expects integrity from everyone inside our home.  Good.
  • He teaches his kids, by example, how to work hard.  Important.
  • He plays with his kids, hard, when he’s done working.  Good.
  • He is optimistic by nature.  Important.
  • He is loving by nature.  Good.
  • He doesn’t think much of himself, so he cares little about what others think of him.  Important.
  • Instead, he cares about how others feel about themselves.  Good.

You see how it works?  My husband is important and good.  Important to me, important to our children, good to us all.  I feel important and good for having married him.  And smart.  And lucky.

Important Man.

This is a picture he had taken for some brochure at work, and yes, he felt like a jack-a through the whole thing.  He’ll be so mad at me for posting this.  I can’t wait.

Good Man.

Scraping dead birds out of our kitchen vent wherein they were trapped last month.  He was very, very good to do this for me.

Happy Father’s Day, Derrick.  We love you for all the important goodness you bring to our world.

And I love you, personally, for being my world.

 

Posted on by jsmith

Junebug. (that’s me.)

School’s out.

Bliss.

I still get insanely excited about summer.  Do you?  It’s the already-warm mornings, the smell of chlorine, the relaxed potential of each day smiling wide before me.  Age has done nothing to dim my appreciation of June, July and August.  We had a cold, windy spring and just this last week, summer showed up.  Warmish-hot, lemon sun, green grass perfection.  Best idea Mother Nature ever had:  summer.

Do you remember summer mornings when you were a kid?  Cold milk poured over a bowl of heavily sugared Wheat Chex, eaten at a cluttered kitchen table beneath a shaft of quiet sun, will always spell summer mornings for me.  Barefoot in my “nightgown” (Dad’s T-shirt), I read Dear Abby and chomped my cereal while soaking up the morning light, listening to a distant lawnmower rumble and a nearby sprinkler hiss.  The smallish houses in our busy neighborhood stood closely together and boasted lots of kids, making for–what I still believe to be–the optimal childhood summer experience.

What does the optimal childhood summer experience look like nowadays?  Volleyball camp, swim team, Disneyland?

Those are all okay.

But they can’t compare to:

the early morning paper route I shared with my older sister (fun in a weird way–are you reading this, Julie?), fighting ferociously with my younger sister in battles that lasted for days (fun in a weird way–are you reading this, Jaimy?) sleeping on the trampoline, racing bikes with my neighborhood “gang,” walking the formidable half-mile to Ron’s on a quest for an immoral amount of candy with said paper route salary (are you reading this, Giana?); marathon monopoly games in which my older and sneakier brother shamelessly cheated his way to victory (are you reading this, Doug?), and, of course, my annual summer birthday party.  An aside about the birthday party:   This was a serious bash.  I invited every girl my age from here to eternity for water balloon fights, treasure hunts, limbo/lip sync/dance contests, cake, ice cream, popsicles and Nacho Cheese Doritos (rare, precious treat!), all followed up by multiple viewings of Annie, courtesy of the huge “video disc player” my parents so generously rented for the event (are you reading this, Sarah?  Teri?  Teri Jo?)

I have a rare photo taken at one of these parties. I believe it is my tenth birthday.  I am standing in front of our kitchen table, which is piled high with gifts and loose, crinkled wrapping, ribbons and cards and small paper plates full of mashed, half-eaten cake (once the frosting was gone, really, what was the point?)  I am wearing a red plastic visor with white-trimming that is bedecked with small bulbs that lit up in multiple colors on the headband, thanks to a D battery “hidden” by velcro in the back.  Think Lite Brite across the forehead.  Not kidding.  (Who got me that gift, anyway?   One fine friend, that’s all I know.)  In the picture I am sunburned and chubby-cheeked and stringy-haired, due to a grown-out Ogilvie Home Perm and too much time water ballooning.  I wear a flowered nightgown, a huge smile, and a mantle of serious BFFs.

I wasted a lot of time in those summer months of my youth: swimming (unsupervised) at the public pool, riding my bike (unsupervised) all over town, producing “plays” with my sisters (Mom and Dad were a patient audience.)  Marathon latch-hooking sessions on the front porch (don’t pretend you didn’t do it too.)  Morning lineup of Price is Right, Press Your Luck, Young and the Restless, and Days of Our Lives, primetime lineup of Silver Spoons, Dukes of Hazard, Love Boat, and Fantasy Island (definitely unsupervised), Nick at Nite lineup of I Married Joan, My Three Sons, Bachelor Father, and I Love Lucy (highly unsupervised; my parents thought we were asleep from 10pm-2 am every night for three months.  it was awesome.)  “Cooking shows” wherein my sisters and I would make Hamburger Helper and Jiffy muffins for a pretend audience, talking to the “camera” with heavy accents while whipping up “Noodles a la Beef” and “Blueberry a la Tarts.”   Surprising my parents with a “restaurant” when they walked in the door from work, wherein we’d serve the aforementioned Fancy Food with scrolly menus on a candlelit table we’d pushed into the living room.  As they ate, I’d play Lavender’s Blue on the old upright piano while my sister lay on her side atop the instrument in my mom’s silky bathrobe and high heels, singing with all the bravado her preteen shyness would allow.

Yep, a lot of time wasted during those childhood summers.  Today’s tiger mothers would be appalled.  Think of all the talents I could have been developing during those mindless hours.  Ah, misspent youth.

Now it is my children’s turn to experience their own tender summers.  Once again, they’ve been given a dollop of extra time to learn, grow, create.  How will I help them make the most of it?

I think we’ll start with Ron’s.  I want to bring my children up right.

 

Posted on by jsmith

Embarrassment of riches.

 

On Mother’s Day I woke up to this:

Homemade cards, pictures, tissue flowers, original poems, and a really cool purple notepad from Ethan that had a picture he drew on every single page. All of this was accompanied by one of Derrick’s signature homemade omelets and fresh fruit, delivered on a tray as I woke up, of course. The perfume is my gift from Derrick, via a less-than-subtle-hint given by me, to Megan, to give to her father. (Premeditated tackiness beats a pouty aftermath. I’ve learned that lesson the hard way.)

A full shot of the loot. I was thrilled, and touched. The gifts just kept pouring in, most of them homemade, which are my favorite kind. If you look closely, you can see that I am wearing a necklace made by Megan.  I love it.  I wore it to church and no less than four people stopped me and complimented it, asking where I got it. None of them could believe it was handmade, by my nine-year old daughter, no less. Ethan admiringly asked, “Is that a real diamond, Mom?” I told him yes, of course it was.  He was impressed.  (And please excuse the hope chest that somehow got plunked down backward when we moved in, and the bare, undecorated wall it rests against.  Still getting settled.)

After the final gifts were opened and I began rousing myself out of bed to get ready for church, the girls dropped one last envelope on my lap. I tore it open with well-deserved anticipation, as it stated the following:

As instructed, I spent a full two hours lounging upstairs in the rare bliss of quiet, late Sunday solitude. I spent most of the time doing important things like updating my iPod and reading your blogs, while my two little dears slaved away in the kitchen, preparing the special meal they’d been planning for days.  Derrick did all of the shopping for them, but I need to make it clear here that they did every last bit of cooking–including dipping, frosting, and slicing–one hundred percent on their own.  They called on their father only to bring down great-grandmother’s china from a high shelf.  I was truly impressed.

Apple-Cheddar Stackers

Strawberry petit fours

Hand-dipped chocolate covered cherries.

Strawberry Lemonade

Not pictured:  “Salted Almonds” and “Plump Green Grapes” as appetizers

This food was all so good.  Not good as in “oh, that’s-so-cute-that-my-kids-made-it” good, but for real:  geeoood! I ate like a queen and enjoyed every bite.  The chocolate-dipped cherries were especially delicious, although the petit fours were light, moist and delectable.  We ate and chatted, and when it was all over Rachael looked around and said, “Um, mom…do you want to sit and talk a while?”  It was then that I realized she had just learned the first lesson of womanhood:  it’s exhausting, and inevitable, that a meal you spend hours preparing will be over in fifteen minutes, max.  Oh my sweet girl, how I wish I could shield you from such truths…

It was a fabulous day.  I have fabulous kids.  I know you do, too.  I also know this was a long, shameless post, but I don’t care.  Soon my daughters will enter their teen years and start hating me, and I’m gonna need posts like these to look back on during those dark days ahead.  But until those days come, I’m flying high.  Right now, I’m just happy to be a mother, especially to my own sweet children.  Aren’t you?

p.s.  It’s two and a half years later and I just re-read this post.  The self-indulgence of the text aside, um…what was I wearing?  Yikesies.