Month: December 2015

It’s Been A Year

A year ago I dropped Amy and the kids (one of whom was only 4 weeks old) off at the airport. I then turned around and began packing up a yellow Penske truck with all our worldly belongings.

Some sweet friends helped with the packing and the cleaning.

Then there was a pipe to smoke, a meal to eat, a few final goodbyes, and then off to the airport again to pick Dad up and start the drive west.

And so, here we are. A year in California. Almost a year in Oakland.

I’ve been through 3 major transitions in the last 10 years. First, Salinas to Durango. Then Durango to Boston (with the added bonus of bachelor to married man). And then Boston to Oakland.

Each transition involves a loss and a gain.

An embracing and a letting go.

Over the past year, I’ve actually really struggled to know what those things were as I’ve processed this experience and this transition.

It may turn out that as another year comes and goes I discover that what I thought I was embracing and letting go of where not really the thing.

But, this is the best I can say at this point in time, a year out.

Letting go? The thing I was a part of had an aura around it. It was cool. It was new and fresh and moldable and had good graphic design and your pulse moved a little faster when you heard about what we were up to.

There were questions and debates and creative thinking and good books were read and discussed and argued over and the envelope was pushed.

Not so much in the new thing. Now there’s more of a weekliness, a grind, a steady pace, and a walking with brokenness in broken places.

Bottom line: it’s not as cool.

But, the embracing.

The embracing of being wanted, instead if simply needed. Of transformation, not just creation.

Embracing being embraced.

Embracing all the strange and unexpected steps that led to this particular moment in this particular place.

The point is not which is better. The point is living into the moment and opportunity that is present right here, right now.

I’ve never been good at that, so the opportunity to learn how to do this is a gift.

To embrace.

All Joy//No Fun

It has been a while since I’ve posted here. One of my goals for the new year is to get back into a rhythm of blogging.

So we begin with a new reflection on parenting. Since the last time I posted anything both of our kids had birthdays, and so we now have a 3-year old and a 1-year old. Which is crazy. Where did the time go.

Anytime I think about parenting I think about the title from Jennifer Senior’s excellent book.

Some people freak out about this title because it feels sacrilegious to question being a parent at any level. Others roll their eyes in a jaded, sort of, “tell-me-something-I-don’t-know” way.

I find most parents, especially of younger kids, tend to go to one of these extremes. Happy-to-be-doing-this roboticness, or totally unsubtle resentment that these little people have robbed them of their “old life.”

Is there a better way to hold the tension?

Parenting is certainly not “no fun.” I have so much fun with my kids. Especially now that they are able to do a lot more and play and jump and talk (well more so the older than the younger, but they are both very interactive in their own ways).

But it is hard.

Our youngest has had a much more difficult time with teething than the older and I’ve spent a few midnight moments in the kitchen trying to rock him to sleep with the help of the humming refrigerator. Precious moments in some ways, but not exactly fun.

Discipline: incredibly important, but not a hoot!

Parenting is also not “all joyful.” There are some painful moments of recognizing one’s own selfishness and broken patterns of behavior.

There are painful moments of seeing those patterns show up in your kids.

There are painful moments of seeing selfish and broken patterns show up in your kids that you know didn’t come from you. They’re just there.

There’s an incredible potential in these tiny humans to break our hearts and if you have any kind of imagination you can see that potential early on.

And yet, there is so much joy. Dessert Friday. Visiting Grammy and Papa and G. Going to the park. Playing catch. Jumping Jacks. Reading books. Dinner together. When the oldest disobeys and then says to you: “Daddy, I want to be in right relationship.”

Live with that paradox parents. The old life is gone, this is a new stage, a new season. And it’s messy and frustrating and thrilling and boring and good.

And it will be transformative, if you let it.