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“You ought to shoot the EAA airshow, you like planes so much!”
“Heh – did the Yakima airshow once. Flew over there in Fifi.”
“Fifi?”
Fifi.
And so of course, I had to explain.
I’m an airplane nut, and years ago was a photojournalist, and any time I could put the two together, I would.
There was a time when a B-17 and an LB-30 (non – combat version of the plane most people would recognize as a B-24) would show up at Seattle’s Boeing field, not much of an announcement, they’d just show up. I went down there with a friend and used up a good bit of the week’s grocery money buying a walk-through tour of the planes. It was a lot of fun… I got some nice pictures – and it was fun to watch and hear the Pratt & Whitneys on the one, and the Wright Cyclones on the other rumble to life.
My wife has said I could start a conversation with anyone, and in this case, I did just that, and ended up chatting with the pilot of the LB-30, who happened to be a United Airlines Pilot living just 30 miles south of Seattle. He gave me his business card.
The LB-30 came back two years later – but with a much bigger friend from Boeing, this being what was then the Confederate Air Force’s (now known as the Commemorative Air Force) mighty B-29, with the decidedly un-mighty name of “Fifi”
Since I’d already seen the LB-30, I figured I’d see what the inside of a B-29 looked like, and used up a bigger chunk of my weekly grocery budget than last time to pay for a walk-through tour of it.
The plane, while huge on the outside, wasn’t made for comfort inside, but utility. As I moved through it, I’d find hand-holds exactly where I reached for and needed them. Definite utility – but there wasn’t a lot cushioning of anything, after all, it was a military plane.
…and as I went forward I saw a leather bomber’s jacket on the map table on the left.
Not just any leather bomber’s jacket – but the one that had the name of the pilot I’d chatted with two years earlier.
And thus began one of my “Only you, Tom… Only you…” stories..
See, this plane had come up to Seattle from Salem, Oregon.
The local CBS affiliate, KIRO, had driven from Seattle to Salem.
They’d gotten on the plane in Salem and flown back to Seattle, videotaping the whole flight.
Exclusively.
From inside the airplane.
It was considered a major coup at the time. They landed, they drove to the station, edited their stuff, and were on the air.
Needless to say, I was down there at the airport shortly after that.
And with that, a most evil and sneaky plan started festering – no – germinating (that sounds healthier) in my mind.
I found myself wondering what their plans were after Seattle -and it turned out they were going to be part of the airshow over in Yakima.
Hmmm….
So the day they were heading over there I went down again, and found the pilot I’d talked to two years earlier…
“Hey, Dick, you got anyone from the Yakima paper covering this?”
(Note: Evil, festering germinating plan being: “I’m planning on doing what KIRO did.” – not because I was brilliant, not because I had permission, but because nobody had told me I couldn’t, and I didn’t know any better than to think I couldn’t just wander down to Boeing field and talk my way onto the only flying B-29 just because I had a camera…)
So I went to the pay phone inside the Museum of Flight, plunked in a few quarters, and called the Yakima Herald Republic, where my friend Jimi Lott had been the photo editor, and asked them if they were covering this. They said yes, they were. So I figured my chances were slim, to none. But about 15 minutes before scheduled takeoff, the photographer still hadn’t shown up, so I called them back and was a little more specific in my question.
“Do you have anyone in Seattle covering this? Someone who’s going to get on the plane and fly with it, shooting all the way?
“No.”
“NOO?”
“No.”
Then I got all young and stupid and just about yelled at the photo editor there for not having a photographer ready to fly back there on the plane…
They didn’t have anyone in Seattle covering this?
They didn’t have anyone in Seattle covering this…
Gad… Didn’t they know what a piece of history this was?
Didn’t they realize they were missing a once in a lifetime event?
Didn’t they –
–the photo editor finally had enough of my attitude and said, “Now what did you say your name was again?”
“Tom Roush…. Jimi Lott’s a friend of mine.”
Jimi used to be his boss.
“Right, so what do you want me to do?”
The light went on…
THEY DIDN’T HAVE ANYONE IN SEATTLE COVERING THIS!
“Well, you don’t have anyone here, right? So here’s what I’m planning on doing… I’m gonna walk out there and see if I can talk my way onto the plane. If I can, I’ll be over there in about 45 minutes or so…. You want color or black and white?”
<stunned silence>
“Uh… Color, I guess…”
“Right. I’ll call you when I’m at the airport.”
“Um… sure…”
I got off the phone with the photo editor, left the Museum of Flight, and walked out toward the plane, which was surrounded by this teeming throng of people, just in time to hear someone yell, “Okay, where’s the photographer?”
And I, Tom Roush…
…who’d driven down there on a whim, and had just convinced the photo editor of a newspaper I’d never seen to buy a picture I’d only be able to take if I could get onto a plane I’d promised the pilot I’d get onto the front page of a newspaper that…
I’d…
never…
seen…
(yeah, I still have to read that sentence a couple of times myself – still working out the catch:22ness of it all)
…called out, “HERE!”
Moses himself couldn’t have parted the crowd any better.
I waved my hand, and “Fwwwwooomp” – Instant walkway. I walked through, feeling simultaneously embarrassed at the attention, and elated beyond words that it was happening.
I tossed my itty bitty duffel bag onto the plane, swung the camera bag up, climbed up, and in 5 minutes we were gone.
They’d started up this noisy little air cooled V-4 Wisconsin motor like my Grampa had on his hay baler – but this was attached to a honking generator. (If you ever saw the NOVA: B-29 Frozen in Time special, it is this generator that broke free and started the fire.) They used the V-4’s generator to run the starter for the number 3 engine. Once that was running, they used the generator on that engine to start up the rest. I could see the tops of the cylinders vibrating a bit through the open cowl flaps as the propellers blew the smoke from starting those big radial engines away.
We taxied out to the runway, and I was treated to one of the smoothest flights I’ve ever been on.
But we didn’t just fly up to altitude, fly over, land… No, we played tag with the LB-30, buzzed a few airfields, and flew past – not over – Mt. Rainier. I hung out the side bubbles and shot up, down, left, right, directions you simply can’t see in a normal airplane.
There was a little stool that you could sit on that got your head up into another little bubble so you could see out the top of the plane. I sat on that and looked out there for a bit – until one of the crew members asked me to let another fellow up – who’d paid $300.00 for the privilege of this flight.
I’d completely forgotten that this might be something people would pay to do, much less be ABLE to pay to do. I got down and was just amazed at where I was and what all was happening. (remember, I’d gone on that $10.00 tour – which had used up a good chunk of my weekly grocery budget.)
As we came close to Mt. Rainier, I asked the crew back where I was if they could get the LB-30 between us and the mountain. They called up to the pilot, he called over to the other plane, and as he flew underneath us, I got some shots of the LB-30 beneath us with apple orchards beneath it
But then, then I got the shot of the only flying LB-30 in the world, taken from the only flying B-29 in the world in front of Washington’s tallest hunk of rock.
And… and it was kind of special…
The next thing I knew we were on approach to Yakima, and we buzzed the Yakima field once and then came in to land. I hurriedly said my goodbyes and explained I had to make a deadline. I found a huge bank of temporary pay phones (this was BC, before cellphones) and called the paper, got the photo department, and got the photo editor I’d gotten all stupid over less than an hour before.
“Hey, this is Tom, I’m here.”
“Here… Here? Where’s here?”
Billy Crystal couldn’t have said it better.
“The airport.”
Exasperated pause…
“WHICH airport?”
Which airport – what kind of a question was that? I mean, I’d just talked to him, I’d told him where I was going to be – where did he expect me to be?
“Well Yakima, of course.”
<more stunned silence… >
…and in a voice tinged with resignation, I heard, “I’ll have someone there to pick you up.”
Ten minutes later, a white Toyota, driven by the same photo editor I’d been talking to on the phone, arrived to take me to the paper, where while we chatted, the film was processed, edited, and then, with a press pass to the airshow, returned to me.
I didn’t really know what to do after the paper went to the printers – so I found a hotel, a Super 8, I think, for $35.00, had some dinner at a nearby restaurant, and went to bed.
The next morning I walked to a nearby Denny’s where I found a whole bunch of Air National Guard photojournalists who were covering the airshow sitting at a table looking at the front page of the local paper.
A picture of an LB-30 in front of Mt. Rainier.
The picture had made page 1.
We talked and laughed and told war stories to each other over coffee, and they, realizing that my car was about 150 miles away, kindly invited me to ride out to the airshow with them. They gave me a press pass, too. I was like the proverbial kid in a candy store. I could go anywhere I wanted. I could get photos of planes I’d never seen before, or since. I could watch the aerial demonstrations of the A-10 Warthog, I could watch things blow up, and I could do it all from in front of the front row.
There was NOTHING between me and the airplanes – in fact, anyone taking pictures of the planes got the back of my head in the bottom of their pictures.
How unutterably cool.
I shot and wandered, and wandered and shot, got sunburned, had a cheap hot dog and chatted with pilots and crew and just had the time of my life, and when they started firing up some of those big engines to leave, I knew it was time for me to head out, too, so I walked into the terminal, found the Horizon Airlines desk, called Jimi to see if he could pick me up at SeaTac, and then bought a ticket back to Seattle for $45.00.
As we flew back, I saw the same scenery as I’d seen coming over, but it was different, and I was different.
Jimi came to pick me up when I got to SeaTac, and we talked and laughed as he took me back to Boeing field and the Museum of Flight where I’d left the Saab the day before. In a few days the paper sent me a check for $35.00 (the same that the Super 8 motel charged me.)
For the price of a flight back and a couple of phone calls, I’d had a weekend to remember, and the experience of a lifetime.
In this blog, I’ve been trying to write stories that have been “baked” – where I’ve spent the time over the years getting to that “aha” moment, where the laughter has finally come, the lessons finally learned, the tears finally dried, and I can share them with you.
This post is a little different.
I’ve been asked by a number of people to give “hankie warnings” on some of these stories, and in honor of that request, please consider yourself warned.
This post is a little more personal than the others, and it’s a number of stories, kind of intertwined.
As I write this – November 8th, it will have been 10 years since I spoke the words below, in front of a well-dressed, somber group of people who listened, who laughed and who cried.
I had been in that last category for ten months, and on November 8th, 2000, these people joined me there.
It was the day we buried my dad.
He’d been in the Air Force. He’d done his time in many countries. It was his time in the Air Force that had him meet my mom, that gave him stories of far-away places to tell, and that shaped my childhood. Some of those stories I’ve recalled in past posts, some are still, as it were, baking, and will be written when they’re ready.
I was at work on January 10th, 2000, when I got “the call”. Those of you who’ve been through this will understand what that means. It’s actually hard to describe the feeling to someone who hasn’t been there, but when I got “the call” – my heart froze, and given where I was, I did the only thing I could do…
I prayed…
…and then I wrote.
I didn’t know whether I’d ever get a chance to tell dad all the things I’d wanted to say over the years – and it seemed that if I was ever going to take the chance, that right then would be that chance, instead of saying all the things I wanted to say to him in a eulogy where he couldn’t hear me, and the words would be empty.
So I wrote a note to him that January afternoon. It’s included in what’s below – which, ironically, is the eulogy I gave for my dad, 10 years ago today.
= = =
Eulogy…
That’s what it says there in your program that this is going to be.
But how do you put into a few words the life of a man who was a brother, a husband, a father, an uncle, a father in law, a grandfather, a teacher — and all those countless other things that a man is in his life?
I’m not going to go into the history of dad too much, you all can read that on the backs of your bulletins. We tried to get as much in there as we could. We’ll also have some pictures going in the fellowship hall so you can see a little more about who dad was.
But right now, I’d like to tell you a little bit about who dad is.
By now most of you know a bit about how this all came about, and for a number of you, the last time you saw him was in this very church on January 8th of this year at Tom McLennan’s Memorial Service.
Dad went into the hospital that night, stayed in ICU at Madigan until May, during which time he had a stroke and some other complications, and later was taken to Bel Air Nursing home in Tacoma, where he died last Friday.
I wrote him a note on January 10th, when things looked pretty bad, his heart had stopped the night before, and we didn’t know what was going on, since he’d walked into the hospital the night before that, and I tried to tell him what he meant to me. I’d like to read part of that note to you, because in a lot of ways, it tells a bit about the thoughts, the feelings, the emotions, and the legacy that he left behind.
<note>
1:45 PM 1/10/00
Hi Pop,
It’s Monday, you’re in the hospital right now, and I’m praying for you.
I have to tell you a few things, just so you know them.
I love you.
— this is so hard to write…
I don’t want this to be the time to say goodbye, but I need to say a few things so that when the time comes, I can say goodbye knowing I’ve told you what I need to tell you.
You know as well as I do that there were a lot of things in our lives that haven’t panned out the way we’d planned.
Because of the time you spent away from the family in the Air Force and at school, I didn’t get a chance to have you around when I really needed a dad.
This doesn’t mean it was easy for you, in fact it was hard. I know now it was very hard for you as well.
But I want you to know that good has come out of that.
I try to spend time with my little boy now as a result, and I’m glad I was able to get my schooling out of the way before I became a papa.
Because you went away to school to improve yourself, I learned that sacrifice is sometimes necessary for future growth.
And good has come out of that.
I learned how much a son needs his father, and I try to be here for my son. So even though you felt very much like you were a failure, you weren’t. You taught me a valuable lesson, one that I will treasure always.
Because of the time you spent fixing things (and the time I spent holding the flashlight for you*)
*He’d ask me to hold the flashlight for him while he was working on something, and being a kid, my attention span was about as long as a gnat’s eyebrow, and so I’d be looking all over, shining the flashlight to what I wanted to see.
I learned how to fix things I never thought I could.
I also expanded my vocabulary during these times.
Because of the way you showed us responsibility, I was able to get a paper route and learn responsibility early, on my own.
Because you helped us deliver those papers on weekends sometimes, I learned that sometimes helping your kids to do the things they’re responsible for doing is a good thing.
Because of the way you told me to take things one step at a time, I was able to build pretty big things at Microsoft when I was there,, one step at a time.
And because you made things for me (like a train table)
and read to me (from Tom Sawyer)
and told me stories (like Paul Bunyan)
and sang to me (The Lord’s Prayer)
and took me to work (where I spun the F-4 Simulator)*
* — in the Air Force Dad was a flight simulator technician — he fixed flight simulators, and one time he took me to work, I think I must have been 5 or 6, and there was this whole line of these simulators — all just cockpits of airplanes, and he, as fathers are known to do, picked me up and popped me in the driver’s seat. I sat there, my eyes huge, as I saw all these dials and gauges in front of me, and it was just so cool and so complicated. — And there was this big stick thing in the way, so I pushed it off to one side so I could get a better look at the dials. I didn’t know that the simulator thought it was flying, and by pushing that stick over I made it think it was corkscrewing into the ground, and all the dials and gauges started spinning alarms went off. I got so scared, I thought I’d broken it, and I looked out at him — he was standing right there, talking to someone else, and with fear and trepidation said,
“Daddy?” —
He turned around, took one look at what was happening, reached in and fixed it. Just like that. He fixed it. I hadn’t broken it. But he just reached in, and with one touch, he fixed it.
and showed me things, (like Wolf Spiders)*
When we lived in Illinois, we discovered that the spiders there are significantly bigger than spiders here in Washington.
So one time Dad was in the basement, doing something, and he called me down. He wanted me to see what he’d found under this can. So, being a kid and being curious, I squatted right beside it, and then picked up the can — to find the biggest, hairiest god-awful ugliest wolf spider I’d seen in my entire life. I jumped up and screamed, and dad was over there laughing so hard. I didn’t think it was funny then, but for years all we’d have to say was “wolf spider” it would bring the whole thing back, and we’d have a good laugh over it.
and surprised me with presents (like at Christmas in 1971 when you told me to clean up a pile of newspapers, and you’d put a bunch of toy trains underneath them)*
*He kept asking me to clean up the papers, but there was always another present to unwrap, another toy to play with, another cookie to eat — and finally, when the Christmas eve was finally winding down and we were cleaning up, I remembered the newspapers and started to clean them up — and underneath was a train set he’d gotten from somewhere, on a set of tracks, just waiting for a little boy to play with them.
and provided for me (helping me get my first Saab)*
*Many of you in this church may remember praying for that very car…
and went out of your way to help me (when that first Saab broke down)
— and the second Saab, — the third one (the fourth one’s out there, it runs fine)
and drove all the way up to Seattle to SPU when I was a student one Christmas to bring me a present — a radio controlled Porsche 928) when you knew it was the only thing I would get.
and visited me at work when I was able to show you where I worked and what I’d become professionally
And supported me in your thoughts and prayers as I became a father in my own right.
You showed me love.
And because you told me, I know you love me.
I love you too.
</note>
I read this note to him several times, never being quite sure whether it got across to him. In August, at the nursing home, I read it to him again, and he looked at me very intently while I read it, and as I finished, there was this look on his face, of peace, of contentment, of, “My job is done.” and for a split second, the stroke seemed to be gone.
He then took the note from my hand and read it himself.
And I know that he knew when he left that he was loved, he was cared for, he was appreciated, and that he would be missed.
We rejoice for him, we’re happy, for him, that this ordeal is over, but we’re sad for us, for the big, dad/Gary/grampa shaped hole he leaves in each of our lives.
— I was thinking the other day about the things I’d miss about him, and I’m sure there will be many to come, but the things that come to mind right now are the little things — and it’s always the little things, isn’t it?
The fact that he’d say “I love you” and “I’m proud of you” so often that we didn’t realize how important it was for him to be able to say that, and now, how important it was for us — the whole family to have him as a cheerleader in the background. There were times he couldn’t do as much as he wanted to do for us, and in his mind, he always wanted to do more — and the fact that he’s no longer in the background, just being there cheering us on — I’ll miss that. We’ll miss that.
I miss his meow — for those of you who don’t know, he had this way of meowing like a cat so you couldn’t tell where it was coming from. It drove us nuts — and we miss it.
I miss him greeting Michael and me with, “Hello Sonshine”
I miss seeing him snuggle my little girl Alyssa, in his lap, reading any of a number of books to her, and the look on her face that told me of the security she felt in those arms.
I miss him standing with mom, waving good bye to us as we left after a visit. — and no matter where we were, when we got together, he’d always thank us for taking the time to do that, to get together as a family, and to include him and he would always remind us, “You are loved.”
We miss him telling us “Remember, a fat old man loves you.”
I miss him yelling at us to shut the living room door. That’s the sound we grew up with. We’d run out, be halfway up the stairs, and hear, “SHUT THE DOOR” — of course, he hadn’t done that for years since he put a spring on it so it’d shut itself. But I miss knowing I won’t hear it again.
I miss him calling me up at night to tell me there was something interesting on Channel 9 (PBS) that he wanted to share with me, even though we couldn’t be together, we could see it at the same time.
When I was growing up, and I’d be upstairs brushing my teeth late at night, I’d hear dad snoring downstairs, — a gentle snore (at least from upstairs) and I knew that that meant all was right with the world.
I’ll miss that, too.
And even though there are many things we’ll miss about him, I know he’s better off now than he was for the last 10 months.
Some time ago I had a dream — a dream of him essentially dying, and it didn’t look as bad as we all generally think of dying.
In my dream, he was laying there, his body all there, but kind of gray, and damaged. It looked like dad, but suddenly he broke free of that body, and he just kind of came up, there was this whole, healthy copy of him, in living color that kind of came out of him like a butterfly comes out of a cocoon, and he was free, he was whole, and he flew away, leaving the gray, damaged body behind him.
After Dad died, Petra was doing some thinking about what his death was like for him, and 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.
During dad’s life, we all knew that no matter where we went or what we did, dad loved us, and I am convinced that up there in heaven, he loves us still.
When the service was done, we headed to what would be dad’s final resting place, and on that cold, clear day, the wind blowing the oak leaves around the cemetery, our family gathered around dad one last time as he was given a military funeral, with an Air Force Honor Guard from McChord Air Force Base, a flag, and a rifle salute.
We shivered as we took our places in the chairs under the portable gazebo they’d set up for us, with mom sitting in the front row. I walked away for a bit to clear my head as the ceremony started.
I’d seen the airman with his trumpet, trying to keep his mouthpiece warm on that cold day, and I knew he was going to play Taps – which I’d learned to play when I played the trumpet in junior high school, but I’d never had to play when it counted.
Taps, originally used to signal “lights out” in the military, eventually became the bugle call played at funerals, where it signaled – or symbolized – a final “lights out” for an individual.
I’d heard it played when my friend Bruce Geller died in 1978.
I’d heard it played when I, as a photojournalist, was covering the funeral of Lee Stephens, a sailor from the USS Stark that was hit by a missile on May 17th, 1987, and each time I’ve heard it, it has been like a knife in the heart for me.
It is a symbol of the end of a life, and of a loved one, where they make that transition from living in your life to living in your memories.
I remember, as I shot the funeral of Lee Stephens, how I wanted to honor the grief and sorrow his family was experiencing, but at the same time, I wanted to tell the story that this young sailor, from a small town in Ohio, who’d graduated just a few years before, had people left behind who still loved him.
I remember seeing, through the viewfinder of my Nikon, through a long, long telephoto lens, the look on this sailor’s mom’s face as the sergeant of the honor guard handed her the flag. It was a photo that, while it was “the” photo from a photojournalism point of view, I did not take. The moment was too intimate, the grief was too raw.
I remember her eyes, simultaneously exhausted, numb, disbelieving, and utterly spent as she accepted a flag from an honor guard member, “…on behalf of a grateful nation…”
In walking away a bit, I had unconsciously recreated the view I’d seen through that camera, the photo I didn’t take in 1987 at that cold cemetery 13 years later, and I was not prepared to see that look on my mom’s face and in her eyes.
But I’d seen that look before, and knew what it meant.
We’d had 10 months to prepare for this moment, but the fact is, we all know we’re going to die. Being faced with it as “sometime” in the vague future is one thing. Seeing it in front of you in unblinking reality is something else entirely.
I saw the honor guard fold the flag as precisely as they could fold it
But this time, I wasn’t hiding behind my camera, trying to insulate myself from the pain of a mother who had lost her son.
This time, while I wasn’t a mother who’d lost her son, I was the son of a mother who’d lost her husband.
This time, I was the son who’d lost his father.
I understood things a little more clearly now.
I understood a little more about how much it means to sit in that chair, and have someone hand you a flag, in exchange for someone you love.
As if that wasn’t enough, it was then that they did the rifle salute. For those of you who have not experienced it, it is very much like a 21 gun salute. Retired military members who have served honorably receive a 9 gun salute, a volley where 3 soldiers fire off three rounds apiece. It is done as a sign of respect, of honor. For those not prepared for it, it can be shocking.
The call was made,
“Ready! Aim! Fire!”
Three fingers squeezed three triggers.
“Fire!”
Three firing pins hit three cartridges.
“Fire!”
Three cartridges fired and were ejected.
The honor guard was called to attention, and the command “Present Arms” was given so precisely – they all moved as one. Those without rifles saluted – those with rifles held them in the “present arms” position.
As the three shots echoed away, the only sound left was of those leaves, the movement of cloth, and the click of rifles being presented.
There was a moment where this was all we heard. Leaves rustling, coats flapping, and the stunned silence of those still not ready to let go.
It was then that the bugler, who’d clearly kept his mouthpiece warm, played Taps. He played clearly, with dignity, and with the respect and honor due.
– and through the wind, I heard the sergeant’s words I’d heard years before, “on behalf…of a grateful nation…” drift across on the wind as he solemnly handed the folded flag to my mom.
And at the end of the day, as I watched them drive off, I found myself, in spite of the fact that I had my own family, a job, a mortgage, all the trappings of being an adult, I found myself crying, because underneath it all, I was a little boy who’d just lost his daddy.
I cried for the fact that much as I’d wanted to, there were things left unfinished.
I cried for the relationship that had at times been rough, but had started to mend.
I cried for the relationship that, like it or not, mended or not, was ended.
…
It is Veteran’s Day as this is published…
For those of you out there who are wearing the uniform, or for those of you who have worn it, with honor, you have my greatest respect.
For those of you who’ve lost your sons – like Mr. and Mrs. Stephens, who lost their son Lee, and so many others, and for those of you out there who’ve lost your daddies, my heart goes out to you.
For those of you who are still daddies, remember your kids only have one of you, and they only have one childhood.
It’s not a dress rehearsal, it’s the real thing.
Take the time to be there for them while you can.
Love them. Hug them.
Veteran’s Day, 2010
Dad and one of the merry go round horses he carved.
My son has informed me that “to be old and wise, you first have to be young and stupid” – and with that in mind, we’ll start with a story – it’s from my childhood, when I, like most of us, was young and stupid.
Speaking of my son, as he was growing up, I told him “Stupid Things that Papa did when he was Little” stories, in hopes that he wouldn’t do those things. Now it’s said that tragedy plus time equals comedy, and when hearing these stories of my stupidity in my childhood, he would usually laugh at the tragedy I’d survived, mostly of my own doing. And somewhere in the story there’d be a lesson, and he’d remember it. Now since I was telling him the stories, it must have meant I’d survived, but still, stupid is stupid.
So, in this case, I was about 16 or so, and I was building a diorama – a model of a burned out, destroyed building that a model tank would be positioned as crashing through. It involved a bit of plaster, a few small pieces of plywood, and a whole bunch of little wood scraps and such – oh, and the model. I was trying to make it look like the building had burned, and needed that black smoky look to come out of the windows.
Black… Smoky… the kind of smoke that comes from… oh, what is that yellow/orange stuff?…
Fire, yeah… that’s where smoke comes from…
(insert ominous music here)
Now, was I doing this on a desk?
No…
(that would have been smart, and I wouldn’t have this story to be telling you)
…a modeling table?
No…
(that would have been smarter, as I’d have a place to put all the bits and pieces and let glue dry)
…someplace where I could safely light a match or candle and let the smoke do its thing?
No…
(that would have been smartest, as – well – lighting matches… teenagers… in the house… need I say more?)
I was doing it on the carpet in my room.
Oh wait. It gets better.
See, I was trying to get a smokey effect…
A match would have been good.
A candle would have been great.
But for some reason, which I must attribute to my Infinite Teenage Wisdom ®, I decided that they weren’t quite good enough and decided to use a highway flare instead of a match.
Oh, just go back and read that again, you know you need to…
Yes, a highway flare...
Upstairs.
In the house.
Over the carpet.
Well – it’s not so much that I really wanted to use the highway flare, but I had it in my hand, and had the cap off, and was idly wondering how much force it would take to get a spark – oh heck – like that would go over as an excuse…
Right…
…did you know that once lit, highway flares are, um, extremely hard to put out?
…and they drip red hot stuff when they’re burning?
…that melts carpets?
Ummmyeah…
Doing the “Olympic torch” run through the house to get it outside just wasn’t going to happen. I mean, there’s that red hot stuff dripping, In this case, it was a carpet, but if I were running (and who can’t imagine running through the house with a flare like an Olympic torch, the crowds cheering, the – no wait – that was just SO not happening…) And that red hot stuff would have been dripping on my shoulder, and that would have been, oh, bad… yeah, we’ll just call it bad… (keeping in mind of course that dripping red hot burning stuff onto a carpet really isn’t on the “good” side of the spectrum).
The more I think about it, the more I realize we’re so far past the border between dumb and stupid that you can’t even see it in the rear view mirror. I’d had some plaster powder there for the diorama I was making – and out of pure instinct I shoved the flare into that – which, to my delight and surprise, put it out. But the thing that got me, I still can’t believe it to this day, was that mom smelled the smoke, came in, and wondered what was going on. And my guilty conscience went ballistic trying to defend itself. Understand, this is a teenage mind going off here – but here was my Infinite Teenage Wisdom ® reasoning:
I argued:
“Just because you smell smoke, and
just because you walk into the room that you can barely see through because of that smoke, and
just because I’m the only one in it,and
you came in through the only door, and
just because I’m sitting there on the floor, with a hot flare sitting beside me and a smoking hole in the carpet, you think I DID IT?”
We pause, reverently, hands over hearts for a moment, as the parents out there realize they’ve heard some variation of this before, both from their own mouths and from their children’s…
“Uh… Yeah… As a matter of fact, I do think you did do it.”
My mom, bless her, realized that she was not arguing with logic in the slightest, she was arguing with a guilty conscience and emotion, and no amount of logic was going to make it through that.
I have no idea why I was defending myself so much at that time – but I was. I’m sure I would have said that someone else was using my fingers and put my fingerprints on it had it gotten to that… Dumb, dumb, dumb…
Speaking of fingerprints…
…fast forward about 25 years – I was in my darkroom developing film for a client, and had some hanging up to dry. My daughter came down, eating some chicken. I put two and two together and said, “Don’t touch the film.” I then turned back to the enlarger. Something made me turn around.
One of the strips of film was moving.
The one with some greasy fingerprints that hadn’t been there a moment before.
There was also a very guilty looking 8 year old.
“Didn’t I tell you to not touch it?”
“I didn’t!”
“I can see your fingerprints right there!”
“It wasn’t me”
“We’re the only two in the darkroom!”
And then…
It dawned on me…
I started thinking about fingerprints and realized that I wasn’t the only one who had a stranglehold on denial, and that my son’s comment from earlier was right…
To be old and wise, you have to be young and stupid first…
I just didn’t know it would be hereditary…
My son has informed me that “to be old and wise, you first have to be young and stupid” – and with that in mind, we’ll start with a story –it’s from my childhood, when I, like most of us, was young and stupid.
Speaking of my son, as he was growing up, I told him “Stupid Things that Papa did when he was Little” stories, in hopes that he wouldn’t do those things. Now it’s said that tragedy plus time equals comedy, and when hearing these stories of my stupidity in my childhood, he would usually laugh at the tragedy I’d survived, mostly of my own doing. And somewhere in the story there’d be a lesson, and he’d remember it. Now since I was telling him the stories, it must have meant I’d survived, but still, stupid is stupid.
So, in this case, I was about 16 or so, and I was building a diorama – a model of a burned out, destroyed building that a model tank would be positioned as crashing through. It involved a bit of plaster, a few small pieces of plywood, and a whole bunch of little wood scraps and such – oh, and the model. I must have been trying to make it look like the building had burned, and needed that black smoky look to come out of the windows.
Black… Smoky… the kind of smoke that comes from… oh, what is that yellow/orange stuff?…
Fire, yeah… that’s where smoke comes from…
(insert ominous music here)
Now, was I doing this on a desk?
No…
(that would have been smart, and I wouldn’t have this story to be telling you)
…a modeling table?
No…
(that would have been smarter, as I’d have a place to put all the bits and pieces and let glue dry)
…someplace where I could safely light a match or candle and let the smoke do its thing?
No…
(that would have been smartest, as – well – lighting matches… teenagers… in the house… need I say more?)
I was doing it on the carpet in my room.
Oh wait. It gets better.
See, a match would have been good.
A candle would have been great.
But for some reason, which I must attribute to my Infinite Teenage Wisdom ®, I decided that they weren’t quite good enough and decided to use a highway flare.
Upstairs.
In the house.
Over the carpet.
Well – it’s not so much that I really wanted to use the highway flare, but I had it in my hand, and had the cap off, and was idly wondering how much force it would take to get a spark – oh heck – like that would go over as an excuse… Right…
…did you know that once lit, highway flares are, um, extremely hard to put out?
…and they drip red hot stuff when they’re burning?
…that melts carpets?
Ummmyeah…
Doing the “Olympic torch” run through the house to get it outside just wasn’t going to happen. I mean, there’s that red hot stuff dripping, In this case, it was a carpet, but if I were running (and who can’t imagine running through the house with a flare like an Olympic torch? – but that red hot stuff would have been dripping on my shoulder, and that would have been, oh, bad… yeah, we’ll just call it bad… (keeping in mind of course that dripping red hot burning stuff onto a carpet really isn’t on the “good” side of the spectrum).
The more I think about it, the more I realize we’re so far past the border between dumb and stupid that you can’t even see it in the rear view mirror. I’d had some plaster powder there for the diorama I was making – and I shoved the flare into that – which, surprisingly enough put it out. But the thing that got me, I still can’t believe it to this day, was that mom came in and wondered what was going on. And my guilty conscience went ballistic trying to defend myself. Understand, this is a teenage mind going off here – but here was my Infinite Teenage Wisdom ® reasoning:
I argued:
“Just because you smell smoke, and
just because you walk into the room that you can barely see through because of that smoke, and
just because I’m the only one in it, and you came in through the only door, and
just because I’m sitting there on the floor, with a hot flare sitting beside me and a smoldering hole in the carpet, you think I DID IT?”
We pause, reverently, hands over hearts for a moment, as the parents out there realize they’ve heard some variation of this before, both from their own mouths and from their children’s…
“Uh… Yeah… As a matter of fact, I do think you did do it.”
My mom, bless her, realized that she was not arguing with logic in the slightest, she was arguing with a guilty conscience and emotion, and no amount of logic was going to make it through that.
I have no idea why I was defending myself so much at that time – but I was. I’m sure I would have said that someone else was using my fingers and put my fingerprints on it had it gotten to that… Dumb, dumb, dumb…
Speaking of fingerprints…
…fast forward about 25 years – I was in my darkroom developing film for a client, and had some hanging up to dry. My daughter came down, eating some chicken. I put two and two together and said, “Don’t touch the film.” I then turned back to the enlarger. Something made me turn around and there were some greasy fingerprints on one of the strips of film that hadn’t been there a moment before. There was also a very guilty looking 8 year old.
“Didn’t I tell you to not touch it?”
“I didn’t!”
“I can see your fingerprints right there!”
“It wasn’t me”
“We’re the only two in the darkroom!”
And then…
It dawned on me…
I started thinking about fingerprints and realized that I wasn’t the only one who had a stranglehold on denial, and that my son was right…
To be old and wise, you have to be young and stupid first…
I just didn’t know it would be hereditary…
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…
Tom Roush's Blog 