neurotypical

Having a teenage son on the autism spectrum has given me pause to re-evaluate a lot of interactions that I've had with other people throughout my life. One example is someone I worked with for a month who I blogged about years ago who didn't understand who would be interested in a certain type of movie.

I remember a specific person who frequently visited someone in my dorm in college who I now believe was on the spectrum was generally kind, but also made me uncomfortable because of some of the very black and white statements and positions he took. I prefer nuance, and this individual did not.

As a parent who is neurotypical I feel like I'm equipped to parent a neurodiverse child, but that all of my instincts are wrong for parenting a neurodiverse child, and soon young adult. His logic frequently runs counter to mine, and we're frequently blind to what's important to the other or what the other is trying to communicate.

While things are definitely better now, our problems communicating and managing new hormones had us in a bad spot a year ago. We had almost daily meltdowns--true meltdowns--and it took a lot of time and effort to get to where that doesn't happen so regularly. That experience has really driven home to me how much I don't understand about the neurodiverse brain.

So much of what I learn now about people who were considered eclectic makes more sense now, and what drove things like the popularity of electroshock therapy and lobotomies in the past.

We've been working with therapists for a while, and they have always been optimistic about the future. However, the most frustrating thing is that we don't know what a realistic future for us and for NJ holds, and so it's hard to put together a plan to meet specific goals.

There really isn't a way to wrap this post up because we're in a very open-ended state at the moment. I'm hoping for the best, though.

family tree

I think everyone is interested in where they came from, but I've been much more in the years since we had kids.  Through the diligent work of various family members in researching, and the efforts of my mom in putting that research together in one place, I've learned a lot about different branches of my family tree that I did not know before.

One branch that I knew very little about bothered me quite a bit because it is the branch that my surname comes from.  I have always known my paternal grandfather father's name, but didn't know anything about him.  Furthermore, my dad only had limited contact with that side of the family when he was a kid, and so it felt like the source of my name ended with that one individual that I knew nothing about.

It's amazing how learning one or two small details about a person can fill in a lot of facts that you don't already know.  I recently discovered further information about this great-grandfather that makes his life seem both tragic and fascinating, but the details are minimal.

First, I found out that my great-grandfather was his father's fifteenth child to his third wife.  Both of his parents died before he was a teenager, so he was raised by a sister.  His father had been a devout Quaker, but I don't know if the family's faith or just the era in which they lived more influenced why he kept remarrying after his wives died and having more kids.

My understanding is that my great-grandfather was irreligious for most or all of his life--a seeming oddity in southwestern Missouri in the early 1900s--and I wonder if he blamed his father's faith for being without parents at a reasonably early age.  While most kids were expected to take on adult responsibilities at an earlier age in those days, I have to wonder how that affected him.  He would have had to grow up fast.

Second, I found out that my great-grandmother (my paternal grandfather's mother) died eighteen years prior to my great-grandfather.  This calls to mind something that my mind does every time I'm at a cemetery.  I look at the gaps between when spouses died and I imagine what their lives were like when they were together, then what sort of life the surviving spouse had afterward.  I know it's morbid, but I can't not do it.

I asked my dad what he knew about his grandfather's life during those eighteen years, and he said he lived alone in a very small house near the Missouri/Oklahoma border with a dog.  I asked if he were a reader, and my dad didn't recall that he was.  What does a person do for eighteen years without someone else around?  Nowadays, I can imagine being able to get on by yourself with TV, the Internet, etc.  However, I cannot imagine a life of that sort of solitude and minimal outside stimuli.

So, with a few additional data points that I have learned in the last few months I have generated quite a vision of how one of my ancestors lived.  It's a sad vision, but it's far more significant than a name on a line in a tree.

no news is good news

One memory I have of my maternal grandfather came from an instance when we were watching the local news together.  They usually made time in their house to watch the evening and nightly news, though I don't recall him frequently commenting on the details of what was on the news.  At the beginning of that particular newscast he encouraged me to count the number of negative stories and compare it to the number of positive stories that were being reported.  As you would expect the ratio was somewhere in the 8:1 to 10:1 range.  He never let me know if there was a specific lesson that he wanted me to get from the exercise, but the experience did stick with me.  I've wrestled with myself over the years regarding what the exercise proved.

One thing I am certain it proved is that the media makes the world far more scary than it really should be.  To allow a newscast to define your understanding of the world is to imagine a world that is far more terrifying than the reality for the average person.  There aren't murderers lurking around every corner.  Most people want to do good, or at least be thought of as someone who does good.  Those good things don't get reported, though.  I am not saying that most people are good.  People are sinners--the whole lot of them, including myself--but people also have humanity and by and large want to do good.

Another thing I think it proved is that the things that are noteworthy sort of establish the opposite about what society is like.  Things that happen all of the time aren't considered newsworthy.  As an example, a news crew could conceivably go to a city rescue mission seven days out of the week and find positive things that people do for others in need, but if someone is stabbed at that rescue mission one day out of the year that bad thing is the newsworthy event largely because it is both abnormal and consequential.

Something that I've given a lot of thought to is what positive news would look like.  Usually when I see a positive story on the news it comes across as either a puff piece or mildly propagandistic.  I don't know how you'd report on positive stories in a better way, though.  Maybe I'm so cynical I can't properly process a good, positive news story.  Is the problem me?

I've also given some recent thought to the news that my grandfather had been exposed to in his lifetime.  I've been watching a documentary on the Vietnam War over the past few months, and I'm coming to understand that the sixties were as much a time of upheaval as the current day.  This is to say nothing of time of the Great Depression and World War II.  So, when he was discussing the news with me he had a perspective I did not have regarding how scary news could be.  Maybe he was preparing me for a time period like the current one when there's a lot in the news to discourage a person.  If so, I think it worked.

ten years

It's extremely hard to believe, but our daughter CD was born ten years ago this coming weekend.  I haven't spoken about her much on this site.  This is because most of my early parenting epiphanies were with NJ, and most of the things I could have said in the last few years would be stepping a bit on her privacy.

She is special to Golden and I in a way that she won't ever really understand.  I frequently think about the fact that our family needs her.  She is the most outgoing in our family (which is an admittedly low bar), but also has a wit about her that amazes me.  She is smart and funny, and there are few people I enjoy talking with quite as much, if I can direct her away from talking about toys or boys.

I think society in general is built in a way that convinces a lot of people, and especially elementary and middle school girls, that they are worth less than they really are.  CD is the most socially adept person in our family, but we do sometimes see her dealing with that. It's a bit discouraging because we can see how valuable and valued she is, but she doesn't always believe it when we try to relay that to her.  Some lessons are only learned with age and consistent love and encouragement.

Ten years ago I couldn't fathom having a ten-year-old daughter.  Now that I'm about to, I can't fathom that the next ten years will see her going from a child to a teenager to a young adult(!).  The years are far too short.

retirement

In thinking about life goals one of the obvious questions that comes to mind is when I want to retire.  I've been struggling with that thought as of late because, as far as I can tell, retirement isn't very scriptural.

The one passage that I have come back to time and again over the last few years is Luke 12:13-21.  In this passage a man asks Jesus to mediate an inheritance dispute he has with his brother.  Jesus' response is to question why he should be an arbitrator in this dispute, then to warn against greed and an abundance of possessions.  He follows it up with what seems like a damning parable.

In the parable a rich man has a bumper crop, and his response is to build grain storage.  He figures he can now live off this grain, kick back, and not worry about life any more.  The NIV records him as saying, "Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”  Jesus calls the man a fool and spells out the condemnation the man is to experience.

A typical westerner will read this passage with an almost automatic, "Of course Jesus isn't warning against savings!  He's simply preaching against greed, laziness, and lack of care for others in a general sense.  Sure, saving excessively is greed, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't save for retirement."  Without fail, if I bring this issue up to others in a church or Bible study setting with a question about retirement, someone jumps to retirement's defense without really addressing the fact that Jesus told a parable where the villain's villainy was simply that they saved when they should have given away.

I'm not actually trying to make a point here.  I honestly don't know what to do with this.  I have a retirement account.  I don't contribute at the level that Fidelity says you should, but it exists for the purpose of providing an income when Golden and I are older.  Is this wrong?

I think the question of what to do with this passage invites knee-jerk responses, but it really deserves heartfelt contemplation, even if a person decides that retirement accounts are good and acceptable.  As I noted, I have a retirement account and I still contribute to it.  Part of the why is that I'm not convinced yet that it's inherently wrong.

One potentially valid argument that I have heard is that the cultural rules for caring for one's elders has changed.  Retirement accounts weren't a thing because elders in the same family unit worked together in whatever the family trade was and all raised the children together.  Retirement accounts are a natural result of a structural shift in our culture where family units are smaller, and don't include grandparents.  Whether that is good or bad can be debated, but it is possible that this cultural element to this that changes the application of this passage.

One thing I am certain Jesus was decrying is a mindset that I do see within the church today, and that I am prone to.  Jesus very clearly indicated that the person who believed they had earned the right to leisure and pleasure was to be condemned.  So, perhaps the question isn't whether retirement from a specific career is wrong, but whether the attitude surrounding that retirement is wrong.  If I have the perspective that I've earned or I deserve to spend the rest of my life devoted to "me time" because I've banked enough money to do that, I'm inviting condemnation.

It's a lot to think about when reviewing my 401(k).

completed bucket list

I recently wrote about goals, and of my lack of a bucket list.  The real reason I would create such a list is to have goals to look forward to, and to create memories of rich experiences.  It occurred to me that, while I haven't created such a list, I can look back at my life and see hundreds of experiences that would qualify as bucket list worthy.

As examples, I can imagine putting on my bucket list in my twenties that I'd like to swim in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.  I hadn't had that opportunity yet even ten years ago, as I hadn't been in any ocean water in my life at that time, but now I have.  I can imagine taking a tour through a cave being on my list, which I hadn't done yet seven years ago, but which I have done twice in that time.  I can imagine experiencing kids camp with my kids being on such a list, and that is something that happened just this summer.  I can imagine maintaining a target healthy weight on my bucket list as well, which is something I've only recently set about achieving.

Even if I don't ever create a bucket list with things that I want to do in the future, just consciously making choices to do things with family and to commit to self-improvement will guarantee bucket list-like experiences and achievements.  Perhaps one of the best ways to be thankful is to look at the experiences in life that I've already had that could have filled a bucket list I may have had ten or fifteen years ago.  I understand that not everyone has the same opportunities to have what appear on the outside to be rich experiences, but I suspect that most adults do have a large number of bucket list experiences and achievements of their own, even if their backgrounds or current situations are not as advantaged as others.

What are some of your bucket list experiences that you've already had or achievements you've already accomplished, even if you didn't put them on an actual list beforehand?

goodbye, grandma

My grandmother on my dad's side passed this past Friday.  She was my last living grandparent, and so this is a bit like the ending of a generation.  I don't know if my thoughts at the moment count as a eulogy, but they're what's on my mind.

When my dad was a teenager my grandparents were called to leave rural Missouri and minister in Arizona.  There's far more to the story than that for those who want to hear the story, but I'm not going to tell that here right now.  Suffice to say, her life was defined by being a farm girl up to a certain age, then working on the Navajo reservation above that age, until their time of ministry was complete.

My mom has always stated that the way my dad does things and the way he thinks and talks comes from his mom.  I didn't notice that growing up, but on the rare occasions when I have seen him with her siblings I had to agree.  However, my take is that he doesn't take after my grandma so much as the entire clan of my grandmother's family.

Since my grandparents lived in the era and locations where they did, one huge thing they did that I noticed that was different than what I was used to was visiting.  When I would be there they would get random friends or family as visitors with no warning who would just drop in and chat for an hour or two in the middle of the day (any day).  I suspect this tradition came from the fact that they didn't grow up with ready phone access, but I did not notice that as much with my other grandparents.  I am sure part of it was that my grandmother had mentioned family specifically that we would be around and would appreciate the visit ahead of time.

If I have a regret it is that I haven't really learned how to connect to family on my dad's side.  Several of us are a bit awkward at managing those communications and connections, and so they get more ignored than they should be.  That's something to learn to be aware of when our kids have families of their own, I suppose.

While we don't ever know who we'll see when we make it to the other side, I really have no doubt that all of my grandparents will be waiting for me when I reach heaven.

careful what you wish for

I know this sounds weird to hear, but I remember when Tiffany Trump was born.  Clearly I wasn't there, but I remember it announced on the news.  It had minor significance to me at the time that I thought would be passing, but reflecting on that memory today has put in perspective for me how much viewpoints can change in one's life.

Ms. Trump was born at a time when my dad was moving between jobs, and so our family was living with my grandparents in a reasonably lengthy interim.  There wasn't a lot of money available in our family at the time, and while I did not grow up rich by any stretch, we were especially poor at that time.  The adults in the picture at the time (my parents, grandparents, and great aunt) all tried to make the best of it, and I was given more or less full reign in my grandparents' basement as my room, which was nice.  So, we weren't destitute on the street, but a big part of my personal identity at the time was feeling broke and trying very hard not to look poor.

At the time all I knew about Mr. Trump was that he lived in New York and was wealthy due to some businesses in the city.  I knew nothing of his personality, the nature of his businesses, who was in his family, or anything.  In a passing statement in the evening news the anchor mentioned that Mr. Trump and Marla Maples had a new daughter that they were naming "Tiffany" after the jewelry store.  The anchor implied that he owned the store, but my understanding now is that he just had business dealings with them.  I remember that all I could think in that moment was that this was a kid who was going to have a much easier time in life than I was having as I experienced a moment of envy.

Fast forward to my current adult life, and I understand today that the source of my envy could not be further from the truth.  I don't know anything about Tiffany Trump, but I do know that I would have hated my life being in now-President Trump's spotlight with all of the associated scandals.  I don't know her relationship with her father, but I do know that it's a running gag among comedians that her relationship isn't as good as with the president's other children.  That alone would be painful.  I don't know a ton about how Mr. Trump parented his kids, but the sources I have heard have indicated that he left a lot of that to the children's mothers.  From money or not, I can't imagine a more isolating situation to live in.

She clearly doesn't crave the limelight, because she'd be in it if she did, but her name is one that almost everyone in the country knows.  It would be hard to establish deep friendships because people already have an opinion of her before meeting her, and who's to say they aren't trying to use her to get to her dad.  How would you even do something as simple as go on a date?  It would be like getting all of the drawbacks of being a celebrity with the only positive being a bit of extra wealth.

I've heard warnings all of my life about being careful for what you wish for.  It's a very common trope in entertainment.  Still, you don't really appreciate the advice as much until you see it play itself out in action.  I really would not ever want to trade my life with that of anyone in the Trump family, and that's something my fourteen-year-old self would have been surprised to hear.

cat's in the cradle

My son turned ten just the other day
He said, thanks for the ball, dad, come on let's play
Can you teach me to throw, I said, not today
I got a lot to do, he said, that's okay
And he walked away, but his smile never dimmed
Said, I'm gonna be like him, yeah
You know I'm gonna be like him

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man in the moon
When you coming home, dad?
I don't know when
But we'll get together then
You know we'll have a good time then

- Jen Chapin ("Cat's in the Cradle")

The song "Cat's in the Cradle" has been on the rotation in my office building's Muzak, so I've heard the song a couple of times in the past weeks while in the bathroom.  I'll tell you, that's a hard song to listen to as a father.

I expect that everyone here has heard it before, but listening through the lyrics it's pretty heavy-handed.  I also understand that the song is from a different era, and I think that accounts for the image portrayed in the song.  There are certainly dads today who could be well-described by those lyrics, who really prioritize their job over their kids, but there are probably many more who feel like most decisions are trade-offs, and working a job is caring for the family.

Our two kids are now nine an eleven.  Our nine-year-old daughter loves to spend time with me, and I love spending time with her.  We read together, watch TV together, and sometimes get opportunities to talk.  I'm enjoying this now as much as I can because I know that I'm not guaranteed that the relationship won't change as she gets older.  When I know I have something that's going to keep me from home before her bedtime it saddens me because I know she enjoys our time together too.

Our son is eleven, and I spend what time I am able to with him.  However, like I did when I was younger, he values his alone time very much.  He has things he enjoys to do, but the natural father-son things like sports, board games, and Legos aren't on that list.  I try very hard to find things that will keep his attention that we can do together, and I try very hard to find good topics of conversation.  I feel that we've made recent progress, but it is a real challenge.  His natural tendency is to wander back to his room as he gets bored.

My schedule is also packed.  I tend to work late, I teach in church, I'm on the church board, I regularly meet with different folks in the church, and I do other random things that fill the calendar.  I have avoided work that involved travel, but I still frequently feel a tension between the importance of time with the family and time with my other responsibilities.

Probably the issue that I most have with the song that opened this post is that it's written from a mildly selfish point of view.  Spend time with your kids now, or it'll be your fault that they aren't around to meet your needs later when you want to spend time with them.  What most concerns me has less to do with those regrets and more to do with the fact that these are the kids' formative years.  Their perspectives of everything in the world are going to be based on a foundation of what they learn and experience now.  Their abilities or lack thereof later in life are being set based on what happens now.  How can a parent affect things when they can only be around so often?

totality

By I, Luc Viatour, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link

I have long been interested in solar eclipses.  When I was fourteen an annular eclipse cut across the United States, and I remember being disappointed that my entire experience with it was through a pinhole projector.

When I found out last year that an eclipse was going to be going through the area, I almost immediately told Golden that I wanted to see it, and I wanted the kids to experience it too.  This led to me researching for months the best possible place to see the eclipse.  We ended up going with one of Golden's friends, and bringing the kids she watches during the day, so this significantly affected which locations would be ideal.

I bought our eclipse glasses early, and we planned a trip to a park in Liberty, Missouri.  The morning of, we checked the weather forecast, and I steeled my nerves for disappointment as the weather did not look promising there, but it looked better than most of the other places I had been scouting out.

When we got to the park we had to sit in the car for 45 minutes while we waited out a rainstorm.  Then, just as the eclipse started, the clouds parted.  We got to watch the entirety of the eclipse from start to totality without any clouds blocking our view.  Then, within five minutes of viewing totality the sun was hidden behind clouds.

Totality was spectacular, and a completely different experience from watching the eclipse through eclipse glasses.  It's hard to describe, but the entire world sort of changes, and the thing in the sky looks completely different than we're used to.  Adding to the experience is the crowd around you getting excited as well.

I know several people who made a good-faith attempt to see totality, but missed out due to clouds.  And so, I feel just a little guilty and a lot fortunate to have been able to have this experience.  It's definitely been a bucket list item for me, and so I feel very privileged that at least this once I was able to experience this with the rest of my family.

toy cars and fireworks

Last week we visited my parents' house for the Independence Day holiday.  There were two noteworthy things about the visit.

First, my mom pulled out some of my old toy cars for the kids to play with.  I did not expect CD to get excited about playing with them, but she found some Micro Machines that she liked.  Her statement to me was that the were cute, and she asked if I thought they were cute when I was a kid.  I told her that is not the word I would have used.

Second, I do not recall being anywhere where there were more fireworks being set off by random people in the neighborhood than this last weekend in the town in Nebraska where my parents currently live.  Every July Fourth brings some fireworks no matter where I am, but I was not used to half the neighborhood in their driveways setting off fireworks at once.  I think this is due to the official display being on the night before the Fourth.

my little girl

Most of my parenting discussion on this blog occurred in the first few years I was a parent, so it was heavily weighted to a discussion of our son, NJ.  Once our daughter, CD, came along I either did not have as much time to post, or the experiences were similar to what I had already posted.  It would be a mistake for me to progress too many years without acknowledging the impact she has had on our family and how truly unique a girl she is, though.

Last month CD turned five years old.  Five years ago when she came along was a very scary time for me.  The economy was headed down the tubes faster than I thought possible and I felt it threatened my job as much as anyone's, I was trying to wrap up my degree program, and we were trying to figure out how to manage both NJ's and CD's needs.  NJ was very jealous of the time and attention that CD required, and so he went into a six-month-long (or longer) melancholy stage where he was very moody.  CD on the other hand, required more effort and interrupted more of our sleep as a baby than NJ had.  She was not born into easy times.  I never regretted having CD, but I did question our wisdom in thinking we could manage everything that was on our plates at the time.

Fast forward five years and we cannot imagine our family without CD.  She is very intelligent, has an incredible personality, and (not to place too much importance on looks) is a very pretty girl.  But most of all she is undeniably unique.  In a house full of introverts she is the one who wants to go out and do things.  In a house full of less imposing individuals she leaves her mark wherever she goes.  In a family full of people who want to observe she likes to perform.  In a family that is largely inactive she has energy and spunk.

Of course, all of this coupled with her ornery nature causes her to require a bit more hands-on parenting than NJ did at the same age.  There is no doubt that she is worth the effort, though.

milestones

Apart from this past week being the 237^th anniversary of the signing of The Declaration of Independence it also marks two other anniversaries, one joyous and one sad.  I am amazed that at what I still consider a young age there are so many milestones that I notice every year of significant things that happened.  Births, deaths, weddings, and all sorts of other things.  Every part of the calendar beckons to memories that are not all of that long-past.

This makes me wonder what milestones are ahead.  Are they largely going to be good?  How difficult will the bad ones be, and who will feel the brunt of the pain?  Is there something that I should be doing at this stage of life to appreciate what I have or to appropriately set up the good milestones?

access to amusement

When I was a kid I mostly lived in rural areas and did not have a lot of disposable income, so I did not go to places like Chuck E. Cheese's, zoos, or amusement parks in general much.  We did go to some to be sure, but the opportunity to do this much was not there.  Small towns do have other things to offer, like bowling, soccer leagues, the Shriner's circus, and city pools, so I still did well.

It's in contrast to this that I notice that our kids have gotten to experience a lot of the things I would have dreamed of as a kid.  They have gotten to experience multiple amusement parks, zoos, pumpkin patches, because the opportunity was there.  In fact, we have already purchased season tickets to Silver Dollar City for the upcoming year.  This past weekend they got to visit the KC Legoland Discovery Center and the KC Sea Life Aquarium, which are two more things that are simply not accessible to a lot of kids.  Based on what I see on Facebook, though, I suspect that we do fewer events like this than the average family.

It is this contrast that is making me wonder, do kids do more things like this that back twenty, thirty, forty, or fifty years ago?  When you were a kid did you go to amusement parks much (more than once a year)?  Did you visit zoos much or fairs, or Chuck E. Cheese's, or other such things?  Were there other things you did more that offset modern amusements that weren't available to you?

I'm not one to complain that kids these days have it too easy, because each generation is faced with it's own unique challenges, and there will always be individual kids in each generation that have to face enormous hardships.  I am wondering if the difference I am noticing is age-related, money-related, city-versus-rural-background-related, or something else entirely, though.

the dad who works too much

I recently saw a Lifetime movie the title of which I don't recall that belongs in a very specific niche genre of movies.  It is a movie where the central focus is that a relationship is restored to a functional state once the man in the relationship discovers that he has focused too much time on his job at the expense of his family.  I can't begrudge this about the movie too much , since this is the type of movie that would be well-targeted to Lifetime's typical audience, and I did enjoy it more than I would have expected.  These type of movies do get to me on some level, though.

I have mentioned this before at a time in my life when this was much more of a sore spot for me than now, but I'm still a bit sensitive to movies where the fault is placed squarely on the husband who places work above family.  I know there are a lot of men who focus more on their work than their family, but it oversimplifies a complex issue.  It also usually couches the issue in terms that make the husband irrevocably the selfish bad guy who is the only person who needs to change for the relationship to be made functional again.

Most breadwinners in situations similar to the characters in these movies are not working long hours to afford a nice summer home, but rather to provide standard of living that they see as important.  The movies do not usually appropriately portray the inherent split priorities trying to be a good dad and a provider can be in the best of situations.  What we learn from this sort of movie is that if a man has to spend a lot of time working or if he pursues his career dreams at some family sacrifice that he doesn't really love his family or is not committed to them.  So, the women in the audience who feel like their men care about work more than them are supplied with a erroneous perspective that will only add harmful conflict and tension to the relationship.

I should acknowledge that of course the fact that this is a sore spot for me says a lot of negative things about me.  Of course it says that I view financial and other types of responsibility differently than I should, and it will be a long time before that is not true.  Of course it means that I still need God to set some of my priorities right.  All of this is something that I have been trying to allow God to fix in me, but old tendencies die hard.

As is obvious, this is a sort of soapbox for me but I have said enough of my peace.  Is there a specific sub-genre of movie or type of character or common plot twist that sets you off like this, even when you find the movie overall enjoyable?  Do you have a movie soapbox?  The obvious caveat to answering that question is that it reveals something about you as well.

102 years

Today, I attended the funeral for my great-grandmother who was 102 years old.  As I only knew her in the later decades of her life I only knew her as a somewhat rough-edged individual.  From the stories I have heard she had always been blunt and capable of getting her hands dirty to the point of killing whatever needed to be killed with her hands or a shotgun on the farm, so I think elements of that personality were probably there when she was younger as well.

What has always struck me, and what I gave a lot of thought to this weekend, was how she essentially lived two lifetimes.

Her husband, and my great-grandfather, lost his first wife during childbirth.  So, she married him as his second wife as a teenager, and was eleven years his younger.  She had seven kids of her own plus his daughter from the previous marriage, and so she lived the life of a farm wife until her husband's death in 1962 when he was 63 and she was 52.  Their youngest son at the time was two days short of his thirteenth birthday.

I don't know too much about her life from the years immediately after her husband's death, but I do know that in the seventies she moved from the Midwest to Arizona with my grandparents to assist in missions work on the Navajo reservation in Arizona.  She was there over twenty years before coming back with them to Missouri where she lived another sixteen years.  Those years had to have been strikingly different from what she had lived up to that point in her life.

I can see how some of the segments of my own life are very different from others, but I have not even reached one third of the life that she has led.  When I think of life being short I think in terms of living seventy or eighty years.  At this stage of my life, one hundred years feels like more time than I would even want.  As she was married into her fifties then lived another fifty unattached, that had to feel like she was two different people.  That's how I believe I would feel in that same situation.

Coming full circle back to my grandmother's personality, it was very strong.  She had zero qualms telling anyone what she thought of whatever and whoever.  As a result, she was incredibly blunt.  She also did what needed to be done, at least when she was physically capable of it.  As she has a strong personality, it makes complete sense that she would establish her own way for the fifty years that she outlived my great-grandfather.

In any case, they are meeting up again now for the first time in literally decades.  That has to be joyous.

cancer awareness

October is breast cancer awareness month. Most people know this already and most people probably also know someone who has had breast cancer. I have at least one close relative who has battled through this form of cancer over the last few years, and had to endure multiple operations as a result. I think we can all agree that breast cancer is life-threatening, devastating to its victims, and absolutely a bad thing. What has bothered me a little in the past, though, is that many of the other cancers do not get the same level of attention and funding that breast cancer gets.

As an example, prostate cancer kills roughly 80% the number of people in the United States every year that breast cancer kills yet it does not receive anywhere near 80% the attention or funding for research that breast cancer receives (prostate cancer incidences, breast cancer incidences). Products all over the grocery store aren't sold in blue packages during prostate awareness month (September, by the way) with proceeds going to research prostate cancer. According to a New York Times article from last year regarding government funding for cancer research, prostate cancer is actually the most common of the cancers, but lung and breast cancers do account for more deaths. Funding is very skewed toward breast cancer when compared to other cancers by almost every measure, however.

A cynical part of me wants to believe that part of the reason that other cancers do not get the attention that breast cancer gets is that our society is obsessed with breasts. In reality, though, I think the modern focus on breasts more of an impact in how difficult the cancer is for the victim to deal with rather than on the attention that is given to it. It would be absurd to suggest that even a significant minority of people who participate in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, for example, do so because they care about one part of the human anatomy more than another. However, there are almost certainly people who participate because of fear or self-image issues a loved one had to deal with due to a mastectomy.

One reason that someone could probably give for all of the focus on breast cancer relative to the other cancers is that it is one type of cancer that can be caught and treated early. I believe that prostate cancer* is probably more important in this regard, though, because men are statistically much less likely to go to their doctors about medical problems they are having than women are. I also suspect that women are statistically much more likely to worry about getting cancer, so they are less likely to need to be made aware that they should be checking for abnormalities that could indicate cancer. If awareness is the goal, it would seem to me that an awareness campaign focused on getting men who weren't going to do so to have their prostates examined would be more effective than one to get women who weren't going to do so to check their breasts for abnormalities.

While I do not know this to be true, I suspect that the focus that breast cancer gets is because it is something unpredictable and scary that affects a large percentage of people's mothers and sisters. If my dad got cancer it would be a very big deal, but he would not talk to the rest of my family about it much simply because most men do not cope by talking things out. Whatever he goes through he does it in silence. By contrast, if my mom got cancer she would cope by talking about it, even though she is not normally much of a talker. I think the constant conversations within families impacted by breast cancer motivates people to take steps to do something about such a devastating disease. Families of men with prostate cancer probably do not talk about it as much, and so they are probably motivated to become active in finding a cure for or raising awareness about this form of cancer. I suspect that this accounts for much of the attention and research funding disparity between the cancers.

In the end I am not trying to say that giving attention to breast cancer and encouraging people to take steps to catch early is a bad thing. I just believe that we should be careful not to focus only on the one type of cancer and neglect awareness and research efforts for the others.

* Update (10/21/2009): I found out this past week that the official guidelines on at least one of the prostate cancer tests recommend not getting the test because the level of cancer found is rarely significant, and the treatments are often worse than the cure. This kind of damages part of my argument, so I felt obliged to add a note about it.

wedding

Golden's brother got married last weekend. It was quite an involved event, actually, as there were seven bridesmaids and seven groomsmen as well as five ushers. That is a lot of people, and was indicative of the effort put into the wedding. The ceremony was only twenty minutes long, however, which is the perfect length as far as I am concerned.

There is so much that I do not understand about weddings. I know that most girls grow up planning every minute detail of their wedding for fun, and I know that the appeal of a wedding is supposed to be that this is a ceremony that focuses on the bride and makes her feel special. I, in my male mind, do not understand much more than this about weddings, though. I think this is epitomized in the fact that every chick flick seems to involve a wedding at some point and every time a wedding shows up in an action movie it is because a character somehow ruins the wedding event by being chased through the area where the ceremony is being held.

Something that I noted on Facebook was that I am very thankful that my parents agreed to fly here to help take care of the kids while everything was going on. There are a lot of things that people involved with a wedding are supposed to do and dealing with two kids under the age of three while doing them would be a monumental if not impossible task. Add to this that no almost-three-year-old boy does not want to sit around a church in a tux for hours on end doing nothing.

Golden's brother went to Greece for his honeymoon and I have to say that it sounds like a great place to visit. I'm interested in hearing how it went. Since we did not officially have jobs at the time and had to pay for most everything with plastic or cash from family when we were married, our honeymoon was to St. Louis rather than somewhere more exotic. It was a much nicer vacation than it sounds, far better than any vacation we have taken since, but I feel that we need to make up for the apparent lameness of our honeymoon destination next year on our tenth anniversary if possible.

So, that's pretty much it on weddings. That is, until the next one I attend.

the narcissistic parent

I have never really been a kid person.  That sounds worse than it should.  There is not much more to it than that. I can definitely enjoy my time around kids, but I simply don't go out of my way to be around kids.  Because of this, I always sort of felt that I needed to justify my intention that I would some day have kids. Having my own kids is different because they are my kids.  I have given a lot of thought lately to what the difference really is, and my conclusion is that it is a mild form of narcissism.

In my opinion there are no two greater kids in the world than mine and Golden's kids, NJ and CD.  That is natural.  I am their dad, so I should feel that way.  Everyone else reading this who has their own kids should feel that way about their own kids.  I think there is far more to it than that, though.  Almost every little thing that I learn about NJ or CD as they get older is something that I see in myself or in Golden.  These two people are combinations of myself and the person who I have decided was the perfect choice to spend the rest of my life with.  Since I love almost everything there is to know about Golden, I am bound to like or at least understand everything I find out about our kids unless I loathe myself.

I have to think that God created us like this to make it easier to get through the challenging moments in parenting.  I already know some of the challenges that NJ is going to present as he gets older, but since I see elements of my personality in him being a part of those challenges, part of me looks forward to them.  I am pretty sure that CD is going to present challenges of her own, but that either Golden or I will have some appreciation of her perspective in those challenges.

This also makes me think about parents who adopt and care for kids who are not their own as if they are their own.  I never really grasped it before, but the people who do that right have to be some among the most giving people in the world.  I have my narcissism (and Golden) to help me through the parental challenges.  They don't have that benefit.

scrooge

Every year, much of the holiday entertainment I see focuses on the need to not be too busy over the holidays. Don't focus on being busy, but focus on what really matters. I try to do this, but I always feel that if I pushed that point too much myself that I would come across as the Scrooge. The following are examples.

Christmas Decorations: We don't really decorate much more than putting up a tree. Part of the reason for this is that the time spent setting up lights and other decorations could better be spent elsewhere. Yes, that is another way of saying that I am lazy, but I have to ask why someone would spend hours of effort (and added expense on the electric bill) on a display that will be taken down in a month.

Christmas Cards: I should preface this with the comment that do appreciate the opportunity to read what is going on in people's lives. The problem I always have is that the year-in-review letters that often come with Christmas cards are so sanitized and often focus on the things that I find less relevant. I know this is the nature of the beast, but that is why I don't care as much for this particular beast.

We actually got at least one form letter this year that violated some of the rules about what should be in a year-in-review letter. I loved it.

I don't think that we have ever done a year-in-review note, though Golden did want to at one point. I think she determined that it was too time consuming. She didn't really get any help from me on it, though, because I would prefer to leave well enough alone.

One other thing is the constant balancing of who we should and should not be sending cards to. Every year there is at least one family who sends us a card that we didn't send a card to. I know that I have heard other people also mention that they underestimated the number of cards they needed to send out. I presume this is because they realized that they needed to send cards to specific people who they did not initially think would be on their list.

Christmas Gifts: My love language is not gift giving. Gifts violate my natural sense of efficiency because the person to whom they are given knows best what they want, but what is the purpose of the gift if the recipient picks out the gift. I think that gift cards are the about the greatest thing in the world, but I get the feeling that a lot of people think that gift cards are cheating.

On an unrelated note, a relative last year gave me a gift card prominently la labeled, "Happy Kwanzaa!" I wish I had thought of that.

Seeing Family: I wish that the holiday tradition was not focused on a specific date but instead on a range of days, because that would remove a lot of the stress of the holidays. No matter what I do, we aren't seeing everyone on the day of Christmas or Thanksgiving. No one really expects that we will, I don't think, but the strain of trying to give different sides of the family holiday time can take away my holiday spirit.

I really am not the Scrooge that I sound like. I am just not as drawn to tradition as much as most people are and I happen to prefer some of holidays that come with less baggage and more entertaining movies—like Independence Day.