Gifts

Her name means “gift from God”. And she is that. She is Hannah, our daughter. In the three years away from this blog, the most significant change in our lives has been the addition of her to our family. With the reboot of this blog and the addition of Hannah, you, dear reader, should know you will likely read a lot about this three year old. So, let me tell you a little bit about her and these past three years with her.

Her middle name is Rosemary. Rose is taken as part of my paternal grandmother’s name while Mary is a name passed down through my wife’s family including to my wife. Hannah and I share the same birth date, August 4. My dad, her Pappaw calls her his blue-eyed blonde. Sometimes when she runs she throws in a few steps of skipping which makes me grin and shake my head every time I see it. She wears little round pink glasses, and before you ask, yes, they are real, as we are attempting to correct some issues she has with her eye muscles. I get a kick watching her with her mom, aunt, cousin and grandmother as I see how her personality mirrors their strong female personalities in so many ways. Sometimes when we are somewhere she will carefully observe someone or a group of people and begin asking me questions about who they are or what they are doing. I try to answer her curiosity as best I can but sometimes her questions come so quickly or so loudly that I refer to her as Nosey Rosey and doing this usually makes her giggle. Then during times when she is grouchy she doesn’t like it when I call her Forrest Grump.

During these first three years, her mom and I have done all those things new parents do…change diapers, wake up every few hours during the night and feed her then try to get her back to sleep. We have endured projectile vomiting, earaches, the cutting of new teeth and the passing of gas in public. We have had no-holds barred wrestling matches with car seats and car seat straps. We have held a piece of clothing every way imaginable and then wondered aloud how it is supposed to go on her body. We have cheered at every progression of her becoming mobile…holding her head up, rolling over, crawling, pulling up, falling down, walking while holding on to something then finally letting go and walking and then running. We have chased lightning bugs in our backyard with her. We have cleaned and bandaged skinned knees. We have worked as high pressure salespeople to convince her leaving behind her pacifier is a good thing. We have stood at the entrance of her room at night just to watch her sleep observing her small shoulders slightly lift up with every breath.

Many of you have walked down this path before as a parent. Any observations I provide are likely nothing new to you despite how I try to dress them up in nice words and personalize them to our situation. So, please humor me as these moments are new to me and they often cause me to reflect.

Frankly, when I view the last three years with hindsight as my guide and answering only for myself and no one else, I am not sure I could have ever felt prepared enough for what the past three years have brought. Don’t get me wrong, these three years have been remarkable. I would not trade any of the moments for anything. Well, maybe I would trade the projectile vomit episode for something but even that now brings a smile across my face and gives me a story to tell for years to come. Despite making it this far, I sometimes feel the same way for the years ahead. I grapple with the weight of responsibility her Mom and I share to raise her in the ways we trust. I wonder and worry some because I understand my own faults and my own failings and find myself hoping and praying I can overcome them and not have them affect her. I can’t help but want to get it all right but also can’t help but wonder how to get it all right. I know others who have walked this path before have felt this way, but yet; this is still all new to me.

Then, I see her in her mother’s arms. I see their eyes dance at one another and then I can’t help but grin when Hannah reaches over and softly plants a kiss on her mom’s cheek. She turns her head and I watch the smile explode onto her face when her eyes meet my eyes. I see her climb down to the floor and take off running and with a single leap jump into my arms shouting the one word that melts my heart into a messy puddle of goo, “Daddy!” When this happens, I cannot help but be amazed at this little marvel of movement, this whirlwind of whimsy, this silly but shy, stubborn but soft-hearted wisp of a little girl who makes the circle of our family just a bit larger, who makes our lives burst tall and wide with vibrant colors, who makes our shadows stretch farther into the future and who makes us more complete than ever before in the here and now. Her arms wrap around my neck and her hug clamps down as if she will never let go. Her mom walks over to me and slides her arm across my back. I close my eyes and thank God for these gifts He provided and I feel a peace inside that makes me understand that when He put us together He would see that everything would be all right.

Still Riding The Brakes

Nearly five years ago, I began occupying this space in some attempt to contemplate a little about life as I grew older. Riding The Brakes has never been intended to be anything that would solve the issues of the day. It was a simple attempt to slow down and notice the sweet, small details of life as they happened. Realization turned into words.

Time and circumstance eventually caught up and the writing slowed and eventually stopped about three years ago. That didn’t mean the moments of observation stopped. It just meant they didn’t make it to pen and paper, or in today’s plugged-in world, they just didn’t make it to blinking cursor and simulated paper.

In those three years, wait for the obvious…a lot has happened. Some good, some bad, holidays, major purchases, drama, humor, growth, mistakes, work, death, life, you know the everyday stuff that fills each life lived. Through it all, I have tried to slow down and notice the passing scenery. So many of the things that have happened have some story attached to them and now, I think I can write about some of those things as well as some of the things that happen now from day to day. 

In the first blog post here, I likened the purpose of this blog to be like traveling down a road except on the journey I hoped to ride the brakes from time to time in order to take life in and enjoy. With these things in mind, I am still trying to slow down, still trying to enjoy the ride and still trying to not miss the scenery and the company along the way. I’m still riding the brakes and, as I have before, I invite you to come along for the ride.

The Sweetest Chaos

Mom and Dad’s house has stood for probably over 70 years. It’s been in our family for almost 63 years. Dad once told me they moved there three days after their wedding. On that long ago March day, roots were planted.

The house is really nothing spectacular. It’s been painted yellow or white or light green through the years. White awnings, trimmed at various times in either red or green, hung over some of the windows. As the family grew, Dad would just build another room or make an existing room just a little bit larger. Now it’s a three bedroom, one bath house with a half-basement, laundry room, dining room, kitchen and two space carport. It’s surrounded by a large yard on three sides and a wooded area on the remaining side.

The house has seen the best and worst of times for our family. Births and deaths. Good news and bad news. Reaffirmation and heartbreak. Laughs and tears. We’ve gathered around the old dining room table and shared meals. We’ve come here when we felt there was no other place to go. We’ve walked the floors here trying to walk out solutions to problems. We’ve relaxed here and drifted off to a place where the worries of the world no longer seemed to exist. Birthday candles were lit here to celebrate the certain passing of time. Thanksgiving and Christmas were celebrated here with enough food to feed a small army and enough gifts to warrant more than one tree.

Something happened over time though. It seemed that we grew too big for this house. The kids got married. The kids had kids. At some point the grandkids had kids. Soon, the number that would gather here doubled in size. At one time everybody could squeeze into one room and then we had to squeeze into two rooms and now it is all we can do to fit everyone into three rooms when we are all together. It seemed to become clear that things just wouldn’t be the same if we couldn’t all be together. Dad’s carpenter skills, learned and honed from necessity, just could not keep up with the burgeoning family.

Another thing happened along the way. Some of us moved away. This meant it was longer in between times when we saw each other. Sad to say, it also means, we only see each other mostly during the holiday season anymore. When it was time to gather together, we sometimes decided to meet elsewhere to a place with more room in order to accommodate as many as could come.

This year it was decided that our family would gather sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas. This year though we wouldn’t meet at a restaurant somewhere and take up twelve tables. It was determined we would gather at Mom and Dad’s house just like we had so many times before.

This decision came with some fretting. Mom is older now and can’t clean the house like she once did. Would there be enough room for everyone? We wouldn’t all be able to sit around the table at the same time.

Still, the day came. Folks began to trickle in a few at a time. Before it was said and done, nineteen of us crammed into the house. Two babies, born less than two weeks apart four months earlier, made their initial holiday family appearances along with three others under the age of six, adding a little life and noise to the old pine paneled walls. We couldn’t all gather around the table at the same time but a funny thing happened, someone would sit down at the table and eat for a time and then someone else would work through the line and enter the dining room where someone would get up and let them sit at the table. So, if you wanted, you could have sat at the table because we rotated seats as needed.

Before long, it was time to open presents. We all crammed into the living room and sprawled ourselves over any open space. The three older kids were really fired up for the gifts and ripped through shimmery wrapping paper to get to a taped box only to tear it open to see what gifts they received this year. After this, our family plays an auction game, taking turns picking gifts and “stealing” gifts from each other. Then later, some of us crash while others gather around the dining room table and play cards or spoons or some other game someone has brought along all the while munching on party mix or sugar cookies or homemade fudge. All this would meld into the late afternoon and into the evening. Some would leave but most would stay.

The routine is pretty much always the same no matter where we get together. That’s good. This year though I tried to take it all in from time to time. I looked around and saw two cousins, five and three, try to pick each other up off the ground as kids often inexplicably do before wrestling around with each other on the hardwood floor, laughing with each tumble. I saw the almost four year old proudly and gracefully show off her new dress, which was pretty but not as beautiful as her smile. I listened to the easy natured joking between family members. I saw the two babies look eye to eye with each other as family members snapped photos of the two newest family members. I listened to my Dad relay a story about the three year old great grandson and my Mom that my Dad could hardly tell without laughing so hard that tears came to his eyes.

And it was all loud and crazy and a bit chaotic for awhile. Some chaos is sweet though. Amidst the chaos I kept thinking how this is the way it should be, that this is where we all should be on this day. We should be here together.

Maybe the five year old and the almost four year old and the three year old will remember the gifts they received this Christmas many years from now. I sort of doubt that though. I remember a lot of Christmases but just can’t seem to recall a lot of the gifts I received wrapped in shimmery paper covering a box with tape closing every gap. Maybe they will look back and recall with a smile how we all packed into a house Pappaw built onto and Mammaw looked after. Maybe they’ll remember how the floor filled with wrapping paper when the presents began to be uncovered. Maybe they’ll look back like I do now and see other gifts received that never sat wrapped under a tree…a place called home, family and friends, laughter, memories, roots and a bit of sweet chaos.

Merry Christmas. May your holiday season be filled with the good things in life especially those you love and the warmth of knowing they love you in return.