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I opened a jar of jelly this morning.
It wasn’t store bought, it was home made.
It was made of something known as quince – a fruit that looks a lot like a drunken pear, and is really not all that good to eat directly, but is wonderful in jellies, it has almost a smokey apple flavor.
Mom’s had a fruit tree – a quince tree for years, and every year she’s canned jelly.
She’d put them in little one pint Ball canning jars, put the year and the type of fruit on them, and then put them on the counter to cool. As they cooled, you could hear them seal – there’d be this audible ‘doink’ as the lid of each one actually sealed shut.
When dad was still alive, I knew she’d be in the kitchen, cutting up fruit, and dad would be sitting in his chair, reading jokes or stories out of the Reader’s Digest to her just to keep her company. He was her cheerleader. There were things she did well, and things he did well – over the years they’d complemented each other. It was a scene that would play out every year, at the end of every summer, when it was time for the harvest of all the trees they had growing.
And every year, when the canning was done, there’d be this armada of jars on the counter, each with its own destination, each with the name of the fruit and the year written in sharpie on the lid.
The thing about this was that often she’d end up making far more jelly or jam than they could consume, and so whenever we visited, we couldn’t leave without a couple of jars of jelly. Sometimes it was quince, sometimes it was black currant mixed with raspberry, sometimes it was blackberry.
And sometimes, these jars of jelly would end up in the back of the cupboard in our kitchen, like this morning.
I opened a jar – this one clearly an old one, one that had been made while dad was still alive.
I rolled it around in my hand, hearing the stories it was telling me – of the fruit that mom and dad had picked off the tree in the side yard, of the way they had carried it over under to the picnic table or into the house, of the stories dad read to mom as she peeled and prepared the fruit. I heard it tell the story of how it was kept cool, preserved for just the right time until she pulled it out of the pantry to give to us.
I looked at it – listening, feeling, remembering.
I unscrewed the canning jar ring, then wedged my fingernails under the lid and heard the hiss as the air from today mixed with the air from many years ago – and the thoughts of today mixed with the memories of years gone by.
I realized, with a start, that not only was I holding a jar of jelly, I was holding a time capsule in my hand.
A time capsule of love.
I dipped a knife into it, and spread it on my toast, and with a cup of coffee and a smile, planned my day.
© Tom Roush
Have you ever taught your kid how to ride a bike? I was
thinking about that the other day, and realized that it never ends…
The thing about learning how to ride a bike – or teaching your kids
how to – is you first start them off in a stroller – you’ve got
full control, they’re just along for the ride, they don’t even know
that you’re pushing, they just know they get plopped into the
stroller and show up someplace else. Next thing you know, you’re
pulling them in a wagon, or a sled – and they become aware of what
you’re doing, and what it takes to move you around. Eventually, as
with all children, they want to do it themselves, so you buy or
borrow a tricycle for them, and they can move around on their
own. It’s at this point that the story changes, because
you’re no longer in control. Soon they’ll see bigger kids riding
two wheelers, and they’ll want to do the same thing, so you get
them a two wheeler – of course, with training wheels. And the
transition continues. Remember how they’d ride with the wheels all
the way down? – and then after awhile you’d sit there rounding off
the nuts with the wrong sized wrench, adjusting them so they’d be a
little higher – so they’d still have the safety of the training
wheels, but would be able to balance a little on their own?
Each kid learns at a speed all their own, and each kid learns at a
speed that’s best for them.
A dad I saw out on a walk who clearly got it.
But what happens on your end is that you help them as long as you can.
You teach them to ride a bike, and then you hold on to the saddle, steadying them, helping to keep them from falling until you can feel in your hand that
they’re not wobbling.
You hold onto the saddle until you feel their pedaling is smoother and steadier. You hold onto the saddle until they’re pedaling faster than you can run.
And you know that if you continue to hold onto the saddle at this point, they can’t ride their bike.
You will, quite literally, be holding them back.
And you realize in a split second, that you have to let go.
You have to let them go.
And to do that, you have to loosen your grip.
Your world changes in that next split second, as you let go of the
saddle.
In that one moment, everything changes.
By letting go, you’ve said to them “I trust you”
By letting go, you’ve said, “You’re in charge now”
By letting go, you’ve said, “I love you, and will be here to help, but you’re the one riding now. Your success is up to you.”
Michael, working on success.
If you hang on – your child will only be able to ride as fast as you can run – and that simply isn’t fast enough.
I’ve talked to several dads who taught their kids to ride bikes – and as I did, they all instinctively held their right hand down as if they were holding onto a saddle as they told their stories.
They knew.
They knew the ride would be wobbly at first. That there would be falls, and Band-aids, and trips to the emergency room. There always are as your child starts to understand this new-found independence.
But in that first moment, that moment you loosened your grip, in the split second that you actually let go of the saddle, you relinquished control over them – you gave that control to them. And the control is everything…
You’re letting them choose to succeed or fail. You’re giving
them the freedom to win or lose. You, as you come to a stop
after running alongside them, panting, see the distance between you
grow as they ride forward with the excitement of youth. And
suddenly – their whole life flashes before your eyes as you realize
that you’ve done this before – but you didn’t know you were doing
it. You’ve celebrated their “firsts” – whether it was the
first time, as a baby, they rolled over…
I remember that day with my son very
well, used to be he’d simply stay where I put him. Then one
day, I’d put him in the middle of the bed, and he rolled over, and
off the bed onto the floor. He let me know about the impact
at the top of his lungs…
– Or that first owie…
I remember when we had the little “child proof” (hah!) gate across
the front door – from the living room to the front steps, and he
was having so much fun bouncing and pulling on it that I didn’t get
a chance to stop him before he fell out, and down the steps.
His head hit one of the steps and within seconds he looked almost
exactly like Worf from Star Trek. He cried so hard, and it hurt his head so bad, almost as much as it hurt my heart as I was holding him.
– Do you remember their first step?
– Or their first word?
– Or their first bite of “real” food?
You realize, as the thoughts drift through your mind, that inside every one of those “firsts” trumpeting in through the front door, there was a quiet
“last” packing up its bags, and shutting the back door quietly
behind it as it left.
You find yourself startled – “Would I have done something different if I’d known this was the last…” whatever it was… If you’d known it was the last bottle you’d ever give them, the last baby food you’d ever do the airplane thing into the hangar with that we all do as parents, or the last diaper you changed on them.
Would you change anything?
Would you do anything different if you knew when their last night at home would be? The last time you saw them? Maybe it’s best we don’t know – because if we did, we’d be paying attention to that back door, when the front
one’s important, too… The thing is, this cycle repeats itself all
through their lives.
Do you remember their first day of kindergarten?
The elementary school our son went to kindergarten at had a “tea and cookies” get together for parents of kindergartners – it was accompanied by large amounts of Kleenex – as it was an entire herd of parents
standing there realizing they’d let go of that particular saddle –
and they didn’t know what to do with their hands anymore. The
Kleenex solved that problem
What about their first time spending the night someplace else, when you
weren’t the one to tuck them in?
I remember saying prayers with my
daughter every night, and for many years, the last voice my son
heard at night and the first one he heard in the morning was
mine.
As a parent of youngsters, you often find yourself
actively wanting this – you just want some peace and quiet
sometimes – and what often happens is this:
It is quiet… Too quiet…
There’s no one skateboarding down the stairs.
There’s no one screaming about who’s hitting who.
There’s no one stomping through the living room like the bass section of a marching band of elephants.
You realize, about then, that you’re definitely not a single person anymore, you realize you’re not just a married couple – but you’re married – with kids – and you’ve become a family. And without that part of the family – something just
feels out of balance, and it only comes back into balance when the
kids come crashing through the door again. The exhaustion
comes right in with them, but so does the joy of having them back.
Do you remember them getting their driver’s license? Heck, do
you remember what it felt like to get in the passenger’s seat on
their first drive?
With our daughter – driving wasn’t so hard, but parking was. I
remember how hard she was trying to learn how to parallel park.
She’d tried and tried and tried – and it just didn’t work…
Out of frustration, she said, “This is impossible!”
And I, being the Ever Helpful Dad, said, “Here, let me show you.” She got out, I got in the driver’s seat, pulled up beside the car she was trying to park behind in her little $800.00 Mazda, put it in reverse, hit the gas,
flipped the wheel hard right, then hard left, then hit the brake,
and put it in park.
“See? It’s easy!”
She wasn’t convinced… At all.
And for years she would figure out ways to park without doing the parallel
parking thing – until she got it, in her own time.
One day, a few cars later, and – actually it was father’s day a year or so ago, she came up and said, “I would have brought you a card – but I have something better.” And then she told me that she’d paid off the car she’d
bought – all by herself. “I just wanted to thank you –
because without what you taught me about money – I wouldn’t have
been able to pay this off.”
Wow.
No card could have been better than that.
In spite of the fact that she’d been living away from home for several years at that time, I felt I could let go of that particular saddle with a little more grace right then… With all of the challenges a young adult has in these times, she’s doing well.
The first time I let our son drive, we took my old Saab out onto an old country road. It’s a 4 speed on the column. I pulled over, said, “Okay, your turn” and got out – we did a Chinese fire drill, and the next thing I
knew, after his stunned look of “You’re kidding, really?!”, he’d gotten us started – no bucking or stalling the car with its clutch that needs replacing. I was stunned. We were up in third at about 35 mph and I was still in shock, “Michael, that was incredible!” and Michael, ever the understated one, said, “Well, what did you expect? I’ve been watching you drive this thing for 16 years…”
That sentence alone is worth another story, and my mind was scrambled there for a while as I tried to handle the overload of that simple statement…
I taught him and I didn’t even realize it?
What does that mean – what else have I taught him without realizing it?
I taught him stuff I wanted him to know without realizing it – what have I taught him that I’d rather he not know?
Do I need to go back and try to undo things?
What would I undo?
How would I find out?
… all while helping him learn the
intricacies of driving a 40 year old car with a tricky clutch and a
freewheeling transmission.
What about their first date? –
Not the one where you drove them, but the one where they drove
themselves, do you remember waving goodbye as they left? Do
you remember wondering what kind of stuff they were up to? (only
because of the “stuff” you got into when you were their age) – and
speaking of “stuff – didn’t it scare the – uh – “stuff” out of you?
One of the hardest things/times that a lot of parents have gone
through in the last week or so, is that first day of school after
high school – when you all pile into the car and take your young
one “off to college.” Your kid is just looking forward to
being on his or her own, where you look at dorm rooms that seem
way, way smaller than what you remember, and there’s so much more
stuff in them now.
My first dorm room had a desk, a bed that folded into a couch thing, and a
closet for my roommate and me. I brought in a 30 pound Remington
Noiseless typewriter (yes, this was back in the days before word processors, but not by much, and yes, it was old then…)
I remember that all the parents looked like foreigners. The day I
moved in, I saw they all had puffy eyes that they wouldn’t
acknowledge, the dads were sweating from carrying so much stuff up
the stairs to the right floor, and the moms were flitting about all
trying to do that one last thing to make things perfect before
they’d have to admit that it was time to let someone pry
their fingers from that saddle.
That ride back home from college – from dropping your first or last or
any kid off can be very, very quiet. It might be the first time the back seat of the car’s been empty in years. It is hard to get used to.
And it takes time.
I remember one child who moved out with just a few
hours warning to a city several hours away. The mom was not
expecting it, nor was she ready for it. I remember taking a
photo of that moment, when they hugged goodbye and both tried to
smile for the camera – the daughter’s eyes bright, looking forward
to a new and exciting future, while the mom was desperately trying
to hold back tears, standing there, essentially looking at her
hand, the one that up until moments before had been holding on to a
saddle – one that had just been pulled out of her hand, when she
herself wasn’t ready to let it go.
It is hard to get used to.
What about their first “real” relationship? The one where
you can just feel the wobbling of that particular bicycle, you can
feel the unsteadiness – you just KNOW, deep in your heart, that
this just isn’t the right person for your child, and yet, you have to let go of that saddle…
Sometimes you have to let them fall, or they won’t know how to keep from
falling.
Knowing when to do that is one of the hardest things to do as a parent.
How would they react to having you interfere? How would you have reacted had your parents told you “she’s not the right one for you” – or “he’s not the right one for you”? – so you walk that razor’s edge of knowing what to say, but
not when to say it – or knowing the right time to say
something, but having no idea what to say…
What about the breakup of that first relationship? The one you find out about long after the fact – when you get what starts out to be an innocuous sounding
telephone call, but over time, the truth comes out, and you know
that they’re hurting in ways they don’t even have words for, in
ways you’ve hurt before, and your heart just aches for them. You understand a bit of it – but you can’t actually say that, now’s not the time.
You want to grab the saddle again, you want to rip it from the bike and use it to whack the crap out of the person who did this to your kid.
But you don’t.
You get the “Band-aids” – sometimes – this takes the form of a “care package from home” – Sometimes it’s sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, or
coffee, or a beer. Sometimes it’s going for a walk or a drive.
It’s astonishing the kinds of things that you hear when you just take your kid out for a drive. But most often, the thing that’s most important is just taking the time to listen to your kid think their way through a problem to a solution, and what’s crucial is they need to know you’re listening to them, and you’re available to do it. No cell phones, no blackberries, no iPhones…
Your kid needs to feel your hand on the saddle right then until they’re steadier, and when they’re ready, they’ll start pedaling again, and it will be time for you to let go.
Again.
This, as you may have guessed, will repeat itself through your life, throughout their lives.
You will find, over the years, that they “ride their bike” in circles around you.
The bike will change, whether it’s their first date, or their first job, or their first day after being let go from that job, or whatever. They will ride by and in one way or another, say what they said when they were little, “Look at
me! Look what I can do!”
And your job is to do exactly what you did when they were little.
You cheer them on.
You encourage them.
You show them you love them.
And they’ll ride away, with the sound of those cheers ringing in
their ears, knowing you’ll be there, in spirit if not in body. —
—
This has been a pretty hard note for me to write, because as you might have guessed, some of what you just read came from personal experience, and as I was writing it, I realized, that as I’m working on letting go of the various saddles my kids are on – that things are coming around full circle, and that my mom is doing the same thing with me. It’s part of life, but it’s hard. As I was writing this – I found my thoughts going back to 10 years ago, when my dad had a massive stroke, he was in ICU for a very long time, and in a nursing home for a while afterwards. It became very clear that as much as we wanted him to be with us, that the time we were able to share with him was coming to a close. I wrote him a note – and in that nursing home room in Tacoma, on a warm late August afternoon in 2000, I read it to him. What was neat, if you can say that, in a situation like this, is that we could tell he was still in there – he just couldn’t communicate out very well. We adjusted the ventilator that was breathing for him so he could talk a little, and I remember his last words to me, “Tom, I love you, and I’m proud of you.” He died two months later. Mom was with him at the end, they’d both fallen asleep, and dad died in his sleep beside her. As I was writing the eulogy, my sister had this image…
…the image she came away with was
this, that dad was in bed, in the nursing home, having just been
sung to and prayed for by the love of his life. She laid down on
the bed next to him to rest, and dad, who had had his eyes closed,
suddenly could see her.
The machine wasn’t breathing for him anymore.
His mind was clear, not muddled by a stroke.
His heart didn’t struggle.
His feet weren’t cold.
We imagine he looked around, saw the things we’d brought in to make him feel at home, saw his beloved wife laying there, who’d been with him for 41 years, for better or worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, and with his new, whole body, then left the presence of his wife to be with his Lord.
But as I thought of it later, I realized that in that moment in August, he’d done what all parents eventually do…
He’d let go of the saddle, one last time.
I miss you, dad…
So. (deep breath)
Run with your kids while you have them.
Love your kids while you can.
Hug them as often as you can.
Teach them how to ride a bike – but know that someday, you’ll
have to let go of that saddle, and when you do, remember what your
job is:
You let them go.
You love them.
And then you cheer them on.
Because while they’re riding away as fast as they can, and while
you’re standing there, the bittersweet realization of what just
happened slowly dawning on you, they need to know you’re still
there.
Take care, folks…
Letting go of the saddle…
Have you ever taught your kid how to ride a
bike?
I was thinking about
that the other day, and realized that it never ends…
The thing about learning how to ride a
bike – or teaching your kids how to – is you first start them off
in a stroller – you’ve got full control, they’re just along for the
ride, they don’t even know that you’re pushing, they just know they
get plopped into the stroller and show up someplace else.
Next thing you know, you’re pulling them
in a wagon, or a sled – and they become aware of what you’re doing,
and what it takes to move you around.
Eventually, as with all children, they want to
do it themselves, so you buy or borrow a tricycle for them, and
they can move around on their own. It’s at this point that
the story changes, because you’re no longer in control.
Soon they’ll see bigger kids riding two
wheelers, and they’ll want to do the same thing, so you get them a
two wheeler – of course, with training wheels.
And the transition continues.
Remember how they’d ride with the wheels all
the way down? – and then you’d sit there with a wrench, adjusting
them so they’d be a little higher – so they’d still have the safety
of the training wheels, but would be able to balance a little on
their own? Each kid learns at a speed all their own, and each
kid learns at a speed that’s best for them.
But what happens on your end is that you help
them as long as you can. – you teach them to ride a bike, and then
you hold on to the saddle, steadying them, helping to keep them
from falling until you can feel in your hand that they’re not
wobbling.
You hold onto the
saddle until you feel their pedaling is smoother and
steadier.
You hold onto the
saddle until they’re pedaling faster than you can run.
And you know that if you continue to
hold onto the saddle at this point, they can’t ride their
bike. You will, quite literally, be holding them
back.
And you realize in a
split second, that you have to let go.
And you loosen your grip.
Your world changes in that next split second,
and you let go of the saddle.
In that moment, everything changes.
By letting go, you’ve said to them “I
trust you”
By letting go,
you’ve said, “You’re in charge now”
By letting go, you’ve said, “I love you, and
will be here to help, but you’re the one riding now. Your
success is up to you.”
If you
hang on – your child will only be able to ride as fast as you can
run – and that simply isn’t fast enough.
I’ve talked to several dads who taught their
kids to ride bikes – and they all instinctively held their right
hand down as if they were holding onto a saddle.
They knew.
They knew the ride would be wobbly at
first. That there would be falls, and Bandaids, and trips to
the emergency room. There always are as your child starts to
understand this newfound independence.
But in that first moment, that moment you
loosened your grip, in the split second that you actually let go of
the saddle, you relinquished control over them – you gave that
control to them. And the control is everything… You’re
letting them choose to succeed or fail. You’re giving them
the freedom to win or lose. You, as you come to a stop after
running alongside them, panting, see the distance between you grow
as they ride forward with the excitement of youth.
And suddenly – their whole life flashes before
your eyes, and you realize that you’ve done this before – but you
didn’t know you were doing it. You’ve watched them do a
“first” – whether it was the first time, as a baby, they rolled
over…
I remember that day with my son very
well, used to be he’d simply stay where I put him. Then one
day, I’d put him in the middle of the bed, and he rolled over, and
off the bed onto the floor. He let me know about the impact
at the top of his lungs…
–Or that first
owie…
I remember when we had the little
“child proof” (hah!) gate across the front door – from the living
room to the front steps, and he was having so much fun bouncing and
pulling on it that I didn’t get a chance to stop him before he fell
out, and down the steps. His head hit one of the steps and
within seconds he looked almost exactly like Worf from
Star Trek. He cried so hard, and it hurt so bad.
–Or their first step, or a
first word, or their first bite of “real” food.
You realize, as
the thoughts drift through your mind, that inside every one of
those “firsts” trumpeting in through the front door, there was a
quiet “last” packing up its bags, and shutting the back door
quietly behind it as it left.
You find yourself startled – “Would
I have done something different if I’d known this was the
last…”whatever it was… If you’d known it was the last bottle you’d
ever give them, the last baby food you’d ever do the airplane thing
into the hangar with that we all do as parents, or the last diaper
you changed on them.
Would you change anything?
Would you do
anything different if you knew when their last night at home would
be? The last time you saw them?
Maybe it’s best we
don’t know – because if we did, we’d be paying attention to that
back door, when the front one’s important, too…
The thing is, that
repeats itself all through their lives.
Do you remember their first day of
kindergarten?
The elementary school our son went to
kindergarten at had a “tea and cookies” get together for parents of
kindergartners – it was accompanied by large amounts of Kleenex –
as it was an entire herd of parents standing there realizing they’d
let go of that particular saddle – and they didn’t know what to do
with their hands anymore.
What
about their first time spending the night someplace else, when
you weren’t the one to tuck them in?
I remember
saying prayers with my daughter every night, and for a long time,
the last voice my son heard at night and the first one he heard in
the morning was mine.
As a
parent of youngsters, you often find yourself actively wanting this
– you just want some peace and quiet sometimes – and what often
happens is this:
It is
quiet…
Too quiet…
There’s no
one skateboarding down the stairs.
There’s no one
screaming about who’s hitting who.
There’s no one
stomping through the living room like the bass section of a
marching band of elephants.
You realize, about then, that you’re
definitely not a single person anymore, you realize you’re not just
a married couple – but you’re married – with kids – and you’ve
become a family. And without that part of the family –
something just feels out of balance, and it only comes back into
balance when the kids come crashing through the door again.
The exhaustion comes right in with them, but so does the joy of
having them back.
Do you
remember them getting their driver’s license? Heck, do you
remember what it felt like to get in the passenger’s seat on their
first drive?
With our daughter – driving wasn’t so
hard, but parking was. I remember how hard she was trying to
learn how to parallel park. She’d tried and tried and tried – and
it just didn’t work… Out of frustration, she said, “This is
impossible!”
And I, being the Ever Helpful Dad,
said, “Here, let me show you.” She got out, I got in the
driver’s seat, pulled up beside the car she was trying to park
behind in her little $800.00 Mazda, put it in reverse, hit the gas,
flipped the wheel hard right, then hard left, then hit the brake,
and put it in park.
“See? It’s easy!”
She wasn’t
convinced… At all.
And for years she would figure out
ways to park without doing the parallel parking thing – until she
got it, in her own time.
One day, a few cars later, and –
actually it was father’s day a year or so ago, she came up and
said, “I would have brought you a card – but I have something
better.” And then she told me that she’d paid off the car she’d
bought – all by herself. “I just wanted to thank you –
because without what you taught me about money – I wouldn’t have
been able to pay this off.”
Wow.
No card could
have been better than that.
In spite of the fact that she’d been
living away from home for several years at that time, I felt I
could let go of that particular saddle with a little more grace
right then… With all of the challenges a young adult has in
these times, she’s doing well.
The first time I let our son drive, we
took my old Saab out onto an old country road. It’s a 4 speed
on the column. I pulled over, said, “Okay, your turn” and got
out – we did a Chinese fire drill, and the next thing I knew, after
his stunned look of “You’re kidding, really?!”, he’d gotten us
started – no bucking or stalling the car with its clutch that needs
replacing. I was stunned. We were up in third at about
35 mph and I was still in shock, “Michael, that was incredible!”
and Michael, ever the understated one, said, “Well, what did you
expect? I’ve been watching you drive this thing for 16
years…”
That sentence alone is worth another
story, and my mind was scrambled there for a while as I tried to
handle the overload of that simple statement…
I taught him and I
didn’t even realize it?
What does that mean –
what else have I taught him without realizing it?
I taught him stuff
I wanted him to know without realizing it – what have I taught him
that I’d rather he not know?
Do I need to go back and try to undo
things?
What would I undo?
How would I find
out?
… while also helping him learn the
intricacies of driving a 40 year old car with a tricky clutch and a
freewheeling transmission.
What about their first date? – not the one
where you drove them, but the one where they drove themselves, do
you remember waving goodbye as they left? Do you remember
wondering what kind of stuff they were up to? (only because of the
“stuff” you got into when you were their age) – and speaking of
“stuff – didn’t it scare the – uh – “stuff” out of you?
One of the hardest things/times that a
lot of parents have gone through in the last week or so, is that
first day of school after high school – when you all pile into the
car and go “off to college.” Your kid is just looking forward to
being on his or her own, where you look at dorm rooms that seem
way, way smaller than what you remember, and there’s so much more
stuff in them now.
My first dorm room had a desk, a bed
that folded into a couch thing, and a closet for my roommate and
me. I brought in a 30 pound Remington
Noiseless typewriter (yes, this was back in the days
before word processors, but not by much, and yes, it was old then…)
I remember that all the parents looked like foreigners. The day I
moved in, I saw they all had puffy eyes that they wouldn’t
acknowledge, the dads were sweating from carrying so much stuff up
the stairs to the right floor, and the moms were flitting about –
all trying to do that one last thing to make things perfect before
they’d have to admit that it was time to let someone pry their
fingers from that saddle.
That
ride back home from college – from dropping your first or last or
any kid off can be very, very quiet. It might be the first
time the back seat of the car’s been empty in years.
It is hard to get used to.
And it takes time. I remember one
child who moved out with just a few hours warning to a city several
hours away. The mom was not expecting it, nor was she ready
for it. I remember taking a photo of that moment, when they
hugged goodbye and both tried to smile for the camera – the
daughter’s eyes bright, looking forward to a new and exciting
future, while the mom was desperately trying to hold back tears,
standing there, essentially looking at her hand, the one that up
until moments before had been holding on to a saddle – one that had
just been pulled out of her hand, when she herself wasn’t ready to
let it go.
It is hard to get
used to.
What about their
first “real” relationship? The one where you can just feel the
wobbling of that particular bicycle, you can feel the unsteadiness
– you just KNOW, deep in your heart, that this isn’t the right
person for your child, and yet, you have to let go of that
saddle… How would they react to having you interfere? How
would you have reacted had your parents told you “she’s not the
right one for you” – or “he’s not the right one for you”? – so you
walk that razor’s edge of knowing what to say, but not when to say
it – or knowing the right time to say something, but having
no idea what to say…
What
about the breakup of that first relationship? The one you find out
about long after the fact – when you get what starts out to be an
innocuous sounding telephone call, but over time, the truth comes
out, and you know that they’re hurting in ways they don’t even have
words for, in ways you’ve hurt before, and your heart just aches
for them. You understand a bit of it – but you can’t actually
say that, now’s not the time. You want to grab the saddle
again, you want to rip it from the bike and use it to whack the
crap out of the person who did this to your kid.
But you don’t.
You get the “Bandaids” – sometimes – this
takes the form of a “care package from home” – sometimes it’s
sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, or coffee, or a
beer. Sometimes it’s going for a walk or a drive. It’s
astonishing the kinds of things that you hear when you just take
your kid out for a drive. But most often, the thing that’s
most important is just taking the time to listen to your kid think
their way through a problem, and what’s crucial is they need to
know you’re listening to them, and you’re available to do
it.
No cell phones, no
blackberries, no iphones… Your kid needs to feel your hand on
the saddle right then until they’re steadier, and when they’re
ready, they’ll start pedaling again, and it will be time for you to
let go.
Again.
This, as you may have guessed, will repeat
itself through your life, throughout their lives. You will
find, over the years, that they “ride their bike” in circles around
you. The bike will change, whether it’s their first date, or
their first job, or their first day after being let go from that
job, or whatever. They will ride by and in one way or
another, say what they said when they were little, “Look at
me! Look what I can do!”
And your job is to do exactly
what you did when they were little.
You cheer them on.
You encourage them.
You show them you love them.
And they’ll ride away, with the sound of those
cheers ringing in their ears, knowing you’ll be there, in spirit if
not in body.
—
This has been a pretty hard note for me
to write, because as you might have guessed, some of what you just
read came from personal experience, and as I was writing it, I
realized, that as I’m working on letting go of the various saddles
my kids are on – that things are coming around full circle, and
that my mom is doing the same thing. It’s part of life, but
it’s hard.
As I was writing
this – I found my thoughts going back to 10 years ago, when my dad
had a massive stroke, he was in ICU for a very long time, and in a
nursing home for a while afterwards. It became very clear
that as much as we wanted him to be with us, that his time here was
coming to a close.
I wrote him
a note – and in that nursing home room in Tacoma, on a warm August
afternoon in 2000, I read it to him.
What was neat, if you can say that, in a
situation like this, is that we could tell he was still in there –
he just couldn’t communicate very well. We adjusted the
ventilator that was breathing for him so he could talk a little,
and I remember his last words to me, “Tom, I love you, and I’m
proud of you.”
He died two
months later. Mom was with him at the end, they’d both fallen
asleep, and dad died in his sleep beside her, and as I was writing
the eulogy, my sister had this image…
…the image she came away with was
this, that dad was in bed, in the nursing home, having just been
sung to and prayed for by the love of his life. She laid down on
the bed next to him to rest, and dad, who had had his eyes closed,
suddenly could see her.
The machine wasn’t breathing for
him anymore.
His mind was clear, not muddled by
a stroke.
His heart didn’t
struggle.
His feet weren’t
cold.
We imagine he looked around, saw
the things we’d brought in to make him feel at home, saw his
beloved wife laying there, who’d been with him for 41 years, for
better or worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in
health, and with his new, whole body, then left the presence of his
wife to be with his Lord.
But as I thought of it later, I realized that
in that moment in August, he’d done what all parents eventually
do…
He’d let go of the saddle,
one last time.
I miss you,
dad.
…
So. (deep breath)
Run with your kids while you have
them.
Love your kids while you
can.
Hug them as often as you
can.
Teach them how to ride a
bike – but know that someday, you’ll have to let go of that saddle,
and when you do, remember what your job is: You let them go, you
love them, and then you cheer them on. Because while they’re
riding away as fast as they can, and while you’re standing there,
the bittersweet realization of what just happened slowly dawning on
you, they need to know you’re there.
Take care, folks…
I was talking to my mom the other day about an email we’d both received – about an American soldier in WWII and how he had done brave things on the battlefield. For example, killing the enemy, saving his compatriots, just doing what soldiers do.
And she, having grown up in Germany during World War II, sent me this note:
You know Tom-Son, looking at war and the so-called ‘victories’ from both sides, something became clear to me during that war. I was between 10 and 14. In school we talked about how many air planes had been shot down, how many ‘Panzer’ (tanks) or ‘Gefangene’ (captured, how many ‘enemy soldiers’ were killed, until…
Pastor Gotthilf Hoelzer one day somberly made the remark
“THEY WERE ALL THE SON OF A MOTHER”
That brought those ‘victories’ into perspective.
During the war, there was no TV. Everyone who had one huddled around a radio in the evenings to hear the “special bulletins”, the “Sondermeldungen”, to hear how the war was going.
Mom was born in 1929, in Germany, at the height of the Depression. This is the Depression that Hitler got Germany out of. The Depression where he convinced many people that he was the right person to be their “leader” – their “Führer” – before things went completely crazy. The unemployment situation was absolutely dire, and mom’s parents – my grandparents – had found employment by working at the milk “Sammelstelle” – a collection station where the farmers would bring their milk to be processed and sent to the larger dairies.
Mom told me just a short paragraph of a story – a story that boils down to six words, but at the same time, could not be told in a hundred lifetimes:
“I remember one family on our ‘milk run’ in Hanseatenstrasse. Their soldier was there when Stalingrad was surrnounded and was expected to be taken by the Russians. The German troops were trapped. The adults of that family were huddled around their radio to listen to the ‘Sondermeldungen,’ knowing that they would not see their man come back. They were all crying. Their little girl did not understand and she said : “Lasset me doch au mit-heula’. (essentially: “Tell me what’s going on so I can cry with you”) She sensed that all those hearts around her were breaking and she wanted to know why…
It was most likely that the adults were crying about her Dad.”
And a flood of images came to my mind.
…the chores still needed to be done, but they were rushed so that everyone could gather around the radio to hear the news of the day. The husband, the father, the brother, the son of someone in that room, was in Stalingrad. Hitler himself had ordered that there would be no surrender. The 6th Army of the Wehrmacht, which had stormed into the city that summer was either decimated or being left there to die.
In that moment, the adults realized that their son would not come home. His father, who up until that moment had been looking forward to sitting down with him and hearing his stories, and in hearing them, would relive some of his own battles in WWI. But he realized as he listened to this news, that he would not hear them, or his son’s voice, ever again. He remembered back, remembered seeing his wide open, trusting eyes as he, like all fathers, tossed his little boy into the air and caught him again and again, his laughter ringing like a joyous bell. He remembered his birthdays, his baptism and confirmation in the church, and his marriage at the little town church flooded his mind as the tears flooded his eyes. He remembered how he was able to sit down, after a hard day’s work, and celebrate that German tradition of ‘Feierabend’ which, while hard to translate into English, can best be summarized by the meaning behind the phrase “It’s Miller Time” .The work is done, it’s time to rest. He’d been looking forward to the end of the war, to be able to have a huge Feierabend with his son, because the work – the war, would be over.
But there would not be any more Feierabends with his son.
Not now.
Not ever.
And he wept.
Unashamedly, he wept.
For the companionship he would no longer have with his son, for the laughter they would no longer share, for this stupid war that was taking thousands of sons from their fathers.
The enormity of what he was hearing on the radio was too much to bear. He tried to read his wife’s expression, and saw the sorrow of a mother who’s being told she’s lost her only son. She was inconsolable. The words she heard from the radio, those of victories for the fatherland, of bravery and sacrifice, were overcome by her own memories. As she sat there, the words turning into a dull buzz in the background, she remembered the moment when she knew she was going to have a son, the first spark of life inside her. She remembered waiting to be sure, and then remembered the simultaneous look of shock, doubt, surprise, and joy in her husband’s eyes as he realized he was going to be a father. She remembered sharing that special communion a mother has with her child as she nursed him. She remembered his first day of school and his last. She remembered the gleam in his eye when he told her about that very special girl, the one he wanted to become his wife. She remembered their wedding day, and how this girl became part of their family.
She remembered his laugh, that belly laugh that can only come from the absolute, unrestrained joy of a little boy, and how it had gotten so much lower in tone over the years, but still, the joy was there. She loved to watch, and listen, as he and that special girl laughed together.
And she realized that she would never hear that laugh again, not from her son, and not from that special girl.
Not now.
Not ever.
And she wept.
Unashamedly, she wept.
For the companionship she would no longer have with her son, for the laughter they would no longer share, for this stupid war that was taking thousands of sons from their mothers.
She held that special girl in her arms, trying to support her, as she was lost in her own thoughts of him.
He’d been in her class, in school. They’d grown up together. They’d laughed and had a history together that started long before the day they walked down the aisle. And as her vision blurred with tears, she saw images she knew she’d never see again.
She remembered the bashful look in her husband’s eyes the first time he talked to her, the nervous look on the day he proposed to her, and the confident, anything but bashful, look on the day they were married. A part of her smiled at that memory.
She remembered the moment when she realized she was going to have his child. She remembered waiting to be sure, and then remembered the simultaneous look of shock, doubt, surprise, and joy in her husband’s eyes as he realized he was going to be a father.
She remembered seeing her daughter’s wide open, trusting eyes as he, like all fathers, tossed his little girl into the air and caught her again and again, her laughter ringing like a joyous bell. She remembered the tough times, and how hard he worked to keep food on the table, and a roof over their heads and how he, despite the Depression, had kept them fed. She remembered quiet evenings sitting by lamp light, quietly sewing, or reading, no words, just companionship, and how much that meant to her.
She remembered when everyone had chipped in and bought the radio, and how it had filled the room with music and laughter; how they had invited friends over and they were able to dance as if they had their own orchestra.
She remembered the light in his eyes as he saw his daughter take her first steps, and how once that happened, there was no stopping her.
And she remembered trying to decide whether to be proud or horrified, or both, when the draft notice came in the mail. She remembered her guarded tears as a train took him to parts unknown for basic training, and the anguished tears she shared with his mother after the train was gone, and they knew he wouldn’t see them.
She remembered that first visit home – how he’d changed, and how proud he looked in that uniform. There was still a sense of pride in her, but there was also an uneasiness that that took quite a bit of strength to keep from turning into outright terror at the things that can happen to a soldier, both to him and by him.
She remembered looking at his hands, the ones that had recently held a new life, wondering if they would be asked – or ordered – to take a life.
She remembered the next trip – the last one – in spring, when he wasn’t allowed to tell her where he was going. She remembered holding him fiercely, and how, as she looked into his eyes, she saw the love, the caring, the gentleness of the man she knew, and she remembered, how the sound of the train whistle changed that completely. She saw the eyes of her husband turn from the look of one who gives and nurtures life, into the look of a soldier, one who takes it.
She remembered recoiling at the shock of this transformation, and how he had pulled away from her. Both of them had brave faces, both had heavy hearts. He turned, walked toward the train, and only once turned to look back. In that moment, she saw, for a split second, the eyes of her husband saying goodbye. Neither of them knew it would be their last .
At first, the radio reports and the newspaper accounts were all full of victories and successes. Then, as the months wore on, September came and went. Hitler had said that Stalingrad would have fallen by then, but it hadn’t. October came, November came, the Russian winter came, and the news then was that the 6th army had been cut off and surrounded. The news reports confidently said that a relief force was fighting its way down to help them, but the Russians fought them off. Then Goering said he’d resupply what remained of the army with 750 tons of supplies a day, by air. But there weren’t enough airplanes left to even get one third of that, and like so many other things in this war that they’d been led to believe were necessary and would succeed, this had failed as well.
They’d been listening warily to every news report, wondering how much of what they were hearing was the truth and how much was lies. They would get bits and pieces of information about what was happening, and it would, all culminate in an overwhelming sense of dread as the news reports came in. Every night, they sat by the radio – the thing that had brought so much joy, laughter, and music, but now it brought nothing but strident propaganda and death.
And then the news reports stopped altogether.
She wasn’t sure exactly of the moment it happened, but somewhere in those weeks of silence from the eastern front that cold winter, she knew. She knew she would never see her husband again. She knew she would never hear his laughter again, or see the look of love in his eyes as she felt his love inside her. She knew she would raise their daughter without him. She knew that she would never again be able to drowsily reach over to his side of their bed and feel his warmth, or hear his soft breathing. She knew now that she would miss even his irritating habits, like cutting his fingernails with his pocket knife. She would never have to ask him to clean up the cut off fingernails again, or clean his dishes off the kitchen table after dinner. She knew she’d never hear him say grace in that wonderful way he said it, thanking God for the simplest of meals, as if it were a feast, fit for a king. He made her so proud when he did that. He was grateful, even for the little things. She remembered that. Oh, what she’d do for those little things – to hear him say grace again, to hear his breathing, to hear him tell her what a good breakfast she’d made, to feel him lift her off the floor in that all enveloping hug he’d always used to say good bye. And she realized, with a start, that when he’d said goodbye that last time, at the train station, that he hadn’t lifted her up like he always did as he said goodbye…
Somehow she knew that from that moment, nothing would ever be the same.
The news reports 3 weeks later confirmed it.
She would not hear his voice again.
Not now.
Not ever.
And she wept.
Unashamedly, she wept.
For the companionship she would no longer have with her husband, for the laughter they would no longer share, for this stupid war that was taking thousands of husbands from their wives.
She remembered her first married Christmas without him, just a few weeks earlier. They were supposed to be done with Stalingrad by September, and here it was more than 3 months later. They did what they could to make it a joyous Christmas, with Mama, and Oma, and Opa, but it seemed hollow. Through it all, the church service on Christmas Eve, and the “Heiliger Abend” later at home, her – their – daughter kept looking at the door, and kept asking, “Wo ist Papa?” (Where’s Papa?)
Christmas and New Year’s came and went, and still no news.
Finally, in late January, there was news.
No, not just news.
The News.
The regular radio programming was interrupted by music, and then, The News.
The relief force had failed.
Goering’s Luftwaffe had failed.
Stalingrad had fallen.
It was so hard to look her daughter in the eye as she tried to give her the news that so many mothers had had to give their children over the last few years, that their father had joined the thousands, the millions, who had “fallen” in the war. They used that word, in their dialect, “Er isch g’falla” – “Er ist gefallen” – “He fell”.
It didn’t mean that he’d fallen.
It meant, quite simply, that he’d been killed.
Stalingrad had fallen.
A son, a husband, a father, had fallen.
And she wept – for him, how cold and brutal it must have been – she couldn’t imagine and didn’t want to.
She wept, for her daughter, who would never again feel the gentle touch of her father’s rough, work worn hand, hear his laugh, hear his deep voice call her name.
She wept for his parents, now across the room together, but each suffering their own world of pain, realizing their legacy was at an end.
And she wept for herself, that she would not be able to grow old together with him.
And as her daughter said, “Lasset me doch au mit-heula” – “Lass mich doch auch mit heulen” – “Tell me what’s going on, so I can cry with you” – she held her, hugged her, lifted her up off the floor like her father used to, like her husband used to, and as the radio droned on in the background, mother and daughter melted into each other, and the little girl finally understood.
She would not hear his voice again.
Not now.
Not ever.
And she wept.
Unashamedly, she wept.
For the companionship she would no longer have with her Papa, for the laughter they would no longer share, for this stupid war that was taking thousands of Papas from their little girls.
Her mother realized she would not be the only child who lived through that war who lost a father. But even still – for months afterwards, the little girl would stand at the window every day, waiting for her Papa. She wanted her Papa to know that he wasn’t alone, that she was there, waiting for him, that his little girl hadn’t forgotten him.
The finality of it all, the stupidity of it all, the arrogance of it all, was just too much. Every day there’d been reports of so and so many thousands of the enemies killed – and she realized, that for every one of them, every one of them, this act was being played out, too… Every day, in Germany, in Russia, in countries far and wide in this war, in living rooms and kitchens, in barns and shops, in factories and train stations, someone was getting news that a beloved part of their life had been savagely torn from their heart.
Of the million soldiers in the Wehrmacht, The German 6th Army, 750,000 had been killed or wounded. Many more simply froze or starved to death. After the siege, the 91,000 left in the city had surrendered. Of those, only 6,000 would ever see what they knew as the fatherland again.
Mom went on:
On the one side of the house was Karl Beisswenger (with 3 children) and on the other, my cousin Karl Klotz (2 children, Kurt u. Elsbeth), who never came back from that war. And upstairs, it was Paule Rosenberger’s father.
That’s the face of war.
No, only part of the face of war.
That’s not mentioning the dead from the ‘Bomben-angriffe’. (Bombing attacks)
I better not get into that.
War is Hell.
On both sides.
Mom
The images came unbidden – in the blink of an eye, if you will. A story that could be told in six words – but at the same time, could not be told in a hundred lifetimes.
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