Stuff My Dad Taught Me

I could spend this weekend trying to avoid Father’s Day. I’d actually gotten quite good at avoiding it over the years. Seems kind of stupid really. After all the good times we had, why would I try not to remember? (She types bravely with a tissues close at hand.) I was looking at some of my favorite old pictures and ran across this one. I was 11 and we were in Kansas City then. I still remember that Christmas Eve. It was cold, as in 15 degrees below zero cold and that was actual temperature. Cold, as in we got to church for Midnight Mass and the water in the baptismal font was frozen. I don’t mean it had a thin crust of ice on top. It was frozen into one big solid block or as Dad put it, “Holy ice cube, Batman!”

That was also the year that the RA first acted up although the doctors wouldn’t find it for another 26 years. In that picture, he’s got my hand completely wrapped up in his because mine were so cold, they’d turned white. He said he could feel the cold on the other hand right through his flannel shirt. Everything hurt that night. When Mass was over, my knees and ankles hurt so bad, I could hardly walk. Dad left Mom and I in the church while he brought the car around. He carried me to car, stopping to let me swipe my fingers across the the holy ice cube on the way out. When we got home, he carried me inside and he sat on the couch next to me holding my ankles in his hands because the warmth made them feel better. It’s funny looking back, I don’t remember anything I got for Christmas that year or for my birthday a few months later. What I remember was his tenderness and his mischievous sense of humor. I hear that same sense of humor from Eugene on a regular basis and Andrew inherited that big heart of his. I can only imagine how much fun they would’ve had with their grandpa, and how much trouble they would’ve caused together.

So instead of avoiding Father’s Day, and with only a little sniffling, here are a few of the things Dad taught me in the 14 years I had him and the things I try to pass on to my boys.

Practical jokes break up the monotony of life. They require forethought and careful planning. Some also require an escape plan.
(He had his car keys in his pocket, ready to roll and flipped the ceiling fan on high over the receipts Mom was carefully sorting for tax time. It looked like snow. She yelled and we ran like hell. We spent the rest of the day at the mall. He cooked her favorite dinner later to make up for it.)

Read. Read everything. Read it over and over. Read until you can recite it. Reading is knowledge and one of the greatest joys in life.

Reach for the books on the higher bookshelves. Teach your kids to do the same.

When you read to a kid, use THE VOICES. Yeah, you know which ones.

Beauty is everywhere, even in the ugliness. You only have to open your eyes and see it.

Never pass up a chance to do something kind for someone. It’s the little things in life that mean the most.
(He used to bring my mom two cups of coffee in bed every morning on a pretty little tray he’d bought for her on one of his trips to Belgium.)

Knowing all the constellations is wonderful, but sometimes you just need to look up at the stars in awe.

Whenever you have the chance to take in a scenic vista, do it. Stop. Get out of the car and breathe in the view. You may never pass that way again.
(I mean this quite literally. On the way from Connecticut to Indiana, we stopped at Niagara Falls. He talked me into going on the Maid of the Mist and I still remember breathing in the spray. I’ve never been back.)

Learn the names of the wildflowers. Leave them where God planted them.
(He taught me that one only after I had picked a big handful of bloodroot. Yuck!!)

Take the time to look at the flowers. They may wilt by tomorrow.

Learn the names of the birds in the back yard. Sing back to them.
(I have lovely conversations with the mourning dove who lives in the tree behind my garage. The neighbors think I’m a wee bit odd.)

Catching bugs is fun, so long as you let them go.

Wild animals are meant to be wild, not caged. Predators aren’t cruel. They only hunt for food and they are part of the balance in nature.
(Beauty in the ugliness. I’ve developed a particular fondness for the osprey that hunts in the Stratford Marsh.)

Praying isn’t something to do in church on Sunday. It’s as all day, every day conversation.

Learn to be quiet. That’s when you hear God.
(Dad’s habit of a 5 AM coffee on the back porch makes more sense to me with every passing year.)

Read the Bible. Read it so much you know whole passages by heart. Someday, you’ll need those words when the book isn’t close by.

Never quote the Bible to score points in an argument. Using God’s words to win man’s arguments is the utmost sign of ignorance and arrogance.

Sometimes life gets so absurd, all we can do is laugh. And that’s okay. God has a sense of humor, so should we.

Sing. God gave you that voice and it’s beautiful to Him.
(Either that or God is deaf, I haven’t quite decided that one for myself yet.)

Bad stuff happens in life. It’s not God’s fault. Someday we’ll understand why.

Death is part of life. It’s not goodbye. It’s see you later.

Blind Ashes

I spent the last few days pulling together pictures to make a video scrapbook for my son Andrew’s fifteenth birthday. As I worked my way through the project, I realized I don’t have many photos from before 2007. When I walked away from my house and a bad marriage, I left nearly everything I owned behind, including box upon box of baby pictures. At the time, I simply did what needed to be done. To move in with Mom and Cathy, to sign away the house, to walk away with nothing but my name, to start rebuilding my life for myself and my boys: I’ve been told it was a bold and courageous thing to do. To my mind it was survival, plain and simple.

I tend to do that, to slip into survival mode. I come through hell, never look back and several years later I’m suddenly looking around wondering why I’m covered in ashes. Going through all those old pictures, I found a lot of ashes.

Every week during my pregnancy, my sister Kitty called me. She lived in Maryland and she was as excited as I was about my first baby. I mailed her copies of the ultrasound pictures and we ran through baby names. As my due date grew closer, our phone calls got longer and it wasn’t unusual for us to talk until the phone batteries would give out. The Wednesday before Mother’s Day was one of those nights. Kitty and I laughed about all the joys of late pregnancy, in particular having baby feet perpetually wedged in my ribcage. She told me that she was planning to come and stay with me for a few weeks after he was born. ‘I won’t come when he’s born,’ she said, ‘everybody comes then and you’ll have plenty of help. I’m going to come later, maybe for his Baptism and stay. That’s when you’ll need the most help.’ The phones started beeping in low-battery protest shortly after that. We said our I love you’s and hung up. I never talked to her again. On Saturday morning, Mom and Cathy knocked on my door at 7 AM. Kitty was gone. She’d died suddenly of a massive heart attack sometime Thursday night. The police found her on Friday. I literally felt my heart break. It was pain compounded when the doctors declared me too close to my due date to travel to the funeral. The day of her funeral, I was home screaming into a pillow on the living room floor, devastated by shock and grief.

Three weeks later Andrew was born. I refused the epidural. My tremendous fear of needles trumped the pain of labor and delivery. When he was born, the doctor laid him in my arms for only a moment. He had aspirated fluid and they wanted him rushed to NICU for observation. I was blind from the pain and while I heard his first cries, I couldn’t see him. Then they whisked him away. Two hours later, I was feeling weaker rather than stronger and the doctor, fearing I was bleeding internally, knocked me out so she could do stitches if necessary. She told me to count backwards from ten. I got to ‘ni…’ and everything went black.

Then Kitty was there with me. ‘I told you I’d come,’ she told me. ‘Wait until you see him, Chris, he’s perfect! He had the biggest blue eyes.’

‘You bitch! You cheated! You saw him first!’ But I was glad she’d seen him. ‘He’s okay? They took him away.’

‘He’s fine. Daddy’s with him.’ Dad had died eleven years earlier but somehow I knew what she said was true. ‘He’s breathing beautifully. He’s so precious.’

We talked about other things too but before she left me, she promised she’d stay with us. Maybe it was nothing more than a drug induced dream but it didn’t feel like one. When I finally came to, several hours later, that rip in my heart wasn’t quite so raw. Once I was upstairs in my room, they brought Andrew to me. Sure enough he had the biggest, brightest blue eyes and he was wide awake.

As I’m working on the video and pulling together pictures, I can’t help but think how much my life has changed in the last fifteen years. The hopes and dreams I had as a new mom at 25 seem so very far way from the way life has turned out at 40. Andrew is heading off to high school in the fall and Eugene isn’t all that far behind him. It’s been in the back of my mind since I turned 40 that Kitty was only 43 and her son was only 17 when she died. I find myself more and more aware of what things I want to pass on to my sons. As I talk to guidance counselors and teachers, I have a growing realization that I’m more concerned with raising intelligent, kind, compassionate, spiritually grounded young men than I am about raising successful A students. That usually doesn’t translate well in parent-teacher conferences but then I’ve always been one to do things my own way.

Now with Andrew’s birthday looming and memories of Kitty lurking, I decided I needed to go out and get lost this morning. I filled up the gas tank and queued up some new music, Ruthie Foster’s Let It Burn to be precise. There’s nothing better then a little blues gospel on such a perfect day for a long winding drive through the Naugatuck Valley. As I drove, I passed many old overgrown cemeteries with the lively new spring grass having little respect for the forgotten and neglected memorials of those long dead. I couldn’t help but think about how much birth and death have intertwined in my life. Dad died on my birthday. His funeral was on Kitty’s birthday three days later. It was an odd bond that we shared as sisters. Then too, Kitty’s death will be forever linked to both Mother’s Day and to Andrew’s birthday. And yet, every year the calendar slap in the the face becomes less about what I’ve lost and more about what remains, namely the love and guidance of my father and my big sister.

Years ago, my friend John told me, that having experienced neither in his immediate family, he considered me fortunate to have known so intimately the two greatest miracles of life: birth and death. I couldn’t, or perhaps wouldn’t, see it at the time. I know now that he was right all long. I just needed to rub the ashes out of my eyes.

Mary Margaret ‘Kitty’ Pelfrey

Your Eulogy

My Friend,

I know you’re struggling now and it scares me. You tell me your life means nothing if you can’t find some grand way to give back and you wonder what do you have to give in the first place. You say if one more person tells you how beautiful you are, you’ll scream. I wonder, Darling, if you know I lay awake at night and wonder what I would say at your funeral. I have finally decided I will not wait until I’m standing at your grave to say the things I need to say. So screw it, scream if you have to. Maybe it will do you some good.

For 28 years now, you’ve made me laugh until I can’t breathe. You’ve made me so mad I swear and hurl insults until I run out of words. Some days you hurl them right back until it gets so outrageous I can’t even remember why I was mad. You’ve let me cry until there was nothing left inside and then held the empty shell that was left.

You taught me how real love acts. In the midst of your own pain, you stood by me when I faced my darkest times. From your corner of addiction hell, you were my sounding board, my sanity and the lone voice of reason when I went through a string of bad relationships and finally wanted to marry a man you knew was dead wrong for me. You asked me not to but you let me make my mistakes without passing judgement. When it turned into a nightmare of abuse, instead of saying, ‘I told you so’, you convinced me I deserved more from life, even while you were pouring your morning vodka at 7:00 on a Sunday morning. When you went to rehab, you wrote me often and called when you could, offering a lifeline of support from so far away.

You taught me to question my church when I saw it used inflated, self-important morality to exclude you or attempt ‘fix’ you. You forced me to ponder why God allowed so much pain and suffering in this world. I learned to pray before I spoke about such things. You showed me that sometimes the most beautiful things are said with silence. You invited me to AA meetings and for the first time in my life, I was in a place where acceptance reigned supreme. It made every church service I’d ever been to seem snooty and cold. You taught me not to be cheap with ‘I love you’s and to hug with all my might because I might not get another chance. You taught me I didn’t need a man at my side to be a complete person. You made me a better woman, a better mother, a better Christian.

I’m sorry. I wasn’t there for you when you needed me most. I put a bad marriage ahead of our friendship. I ask your forgiveness. Now you live so far away, it breaks my heart that I can’t sit by you and hold your hand. I told you so many times that you were my hero when you went to rehab and worked your way through the 12 Steps but I never told you why. You weren’t my hero because you stopped drinking or got it together. You ARE my hero, even now, because you can admit you aren’t perfect. Nobody is but few of us ever have the cojones to say so.

So you don’t think your life means anything? Well damn it Honey, it means something to me. Nothing you do can ever change that fact. You don’t want to hear that you’re beautiful, kind, compassionate, creative, intelligent and talented? You don’t want to hear that you made my life better just by being you? Fine. I won’t tell you that. I’ll tell you want you want to hear: You’re a drunk and you screw up. And I’ll tell you something else: I love you anyway. And if you drink yourself into an early grave, I’ll still love you. And then just to piss you off, I’ll tell the whole wide world just how amazing you are.

PS. If I love you this much and God loves you so much more, don’t you think maybe you could find something in yourself that might possibly be just a little bit lovable?

No. Now what?

Once upon a time, I was inspired to start writing a story, an allegory really. It took a few twists and turns that I hadn’t expected. I’ve written a lot of stuff over the years and this proved to be the hardest thing I’d ever written. I kept trying to force the story in a different direction but it refused to cooperate. Trying to mold this story was like trying to sculpt water. Sounds crazy doesn’t it? It was exasperating but Deacon Ron, my spiritual director, suspected there was more to this so he pushed me to follow it to the end and find out where it led. The result was the short story My Ride. On the surface, it was a fictional face-to-face encounter with the evil voice in my character’s head that I dubbed the Gremlin and some guy who may or may not be Jesus. Underneath it all, it was face-to-face encounter with the evil Gremlin in my own pretty little head and some guy that I know is Jesus.

Well that was a long time ago. Things change. I’ve changed. I haven’t looked at that story in a long time, say three years ago when I published it. So out of nowhere, it came up in conversation last month. Deacon Ron loves to read as much as I do and he started telling me he’d read Paulo Cohelo’s The Pilgrimage. The main character has to name and talk to his own personal devil as well as his personal angel. That had reminded him of my crazy little tale.

That left me intrigued enough to download The Pilgrimage and to reread My Ride. At first, I was a little smug, thinking how far I’d come since 2009. The Gremlin isn’t so much of a dominant force anymore. I know who Jesus is and we’re cool. Right? Umm…well…maybe. Cue Gremlin snickering. Okay fine. So I have a few issues with Jesus at the moment. What else is new? I put myself into that face-to-face with the Biker Jesus I’m most comfortable with and I unloaded on him. I ranted and I raved about needing a few words of reassurance in the midst of all the craziness. But no. I get the old widow scraping the bottom of her flour jar.

“With all the passages of being shield, protector, defender, cups running over, don’t be afraid, I’m always with you, blah blah blah, WHY THAT ONE?!” Yes, I actually blah, blah, blahed Jesus.

Calm as ever, he looked me in the eye and asked, “If I’d pointed you to any one of those, would you have believed it?”

Shit! I hate it when he does that. “No.”

Now what? I don’t know. I’m all out of fight and this conversation is obviously far from over. Meanwhile, the flour jar hasn’t run out.

Stop Bugging Me!

Dear Reader: Warning, I’m in a bad mood. This is a grudge post. I don’t want to write it. I have to write it. I don’t know why but since God has this ricocheting around endlessly inside me, it’s either write it or go stark raving mad. Yeah, I know, that’s really freaking inspiring isn’t it? Well, I never promised inspiration. I promised honesty.

A lot has happened since my last post. “Come hell or high water, I’m celebrating 40!” And Hell said, “Challenge accepted, Sweetheart. Let’s dance!” 24 hours after I published that post, I got the call that my mom had fallen and broken her arm. That turned into a saga and I’ll spare you all the details. The Cliff’s Notes version is she needed a total reverse shoulder replacement because my dog yanked her off the back porch onto the pavement. Insert two weeks of hospital, doctors, and drama. She had surgery the week before I was scheduled to leave for four days of solitude on Cape Cod. The day she came home from the hospital, Eugene spiked 104 fever. In the end, it all worked out. Eugene’s second attempt at antibiotics worked. My ex took the dog for visitation along with the boys. My sisters took care of my mom. I had some time alone to recharge. I’d never been to the Cape before and when I came over the crest of the hill at Coast Guard Beach and saw the Atlantic for the first time in six years, I finally quit swearing at God. I soaked up as much sunshine and salt water as I possibly could. I came home to celebrate Holy Week, my birthday and an Easter Vigil that was absolutely on fire.

But that was a month ago. Life hasn’t slowed down any. Mom gets better every day but she still needs help with stuff and she doesn’t like to ask so I constantly try to anticipate what she needs. There are physical therapy visits twice a week and follow-up appointments with the doctors. My kids have had stuff going on, as kids always do. I’m exhausted all the time but instead of doing less, I’m doing more. It was only a matter of time and finally, the stress caught up with me. My RA flared up. Right now my body’s message is loud and clear: if it bends, it hurts. My eyes are acting up again. The headaches are back with a vengeance. The feeling of scraping the bottom of the barrel is there every day. I’m getting through my days, but just barely.

That’s when God decided to mess with me. That image of scraping bottom wouldn’t go away. In one of those 1:30 AM sit-bolt-upright-in-bed moments, I remembered the story of the widow with her flour and oil that never ran out. I really didn’t appreciate it since I was awake the rest of the night and if I’m awake, I hurt. But every day for last two weeks, that image keeps coming back me. I knew I’d heard it at Mass at some point but it had been months ago. I even remembered it in the lector’s voice. So this morning I finally threw up my hands. ‘Alright already God! I’ll find it. Just to get you off my case!’ So I Googled it and found the passage.

So Elijah asks the widow for bread. She was at the bottom of the jar of flour and the same with the oil. Why did she do what he asked? Fear? If I feed him, he’ll go away? Compliance? This is what women are supposed to do? Trust? Something about Elijah seemed safe? Some combination of the three? She didn’t starve to death. Neither did Elijah or her son. They never ran out. They got by until the rains came and the famine ended. It was a long time but how long? But was the flour jar ever full? Was it always scraping the last of it to get by, day after day after day? Was she confident that the flour and oil wouldn’t run out or did she go to sleep every night wondering if today’s bread would be the last? Elijah was sure of it but what about her?

Well, that’s all I’ve got. Wonderful. I have more questions than answers. ‘That’s very helpful. Thank you, Lord.’ Yes, I’m living proof that God doesn’t smite people for sarcasm.

My Different 40 Days

While all of Christendom has been reflecting on these 40 days of Lent and counting down to the joy of Easter, I’ve been reflecting on a different 40 days. I’m going to turn 40 on Holy Thursday and I’ve been keeping the countdown since before Ash Wednesday. My friends have asked why it’s such a big deal to me. “Really Chris, it’s just a number,” they say. “Don’t let it get to you.” But that’s just the thing, it’s not getting to me, or at least not in a bad way. It’s a reason to reflect on where I am I life and then celebrate where I am. On my 14th birthday, my dad passed away. At 21, I was too busy planning my wedding. At 25, I was busy planning for my first son to be born. At 30, I was too busy chasing a preschooler and a toddler. At 35, I was too busy dealing with my divorce and the first major crisis with my eyes. I decided 40 is mine. Come hell or high water, I’m celebrating 40! A fellow classmate and member of The Turning 40 Club posted a link to an article that listed 40 things every woman should do before she turns 40. I read it and tallied my score (32 out of 40) but I was disappointed in the list.

‘Get married. Get divorced.’

Wait a minute, I didn’t get married with the intention of getting divorced.

‘Have an affair.’

Destroy a marriage is a goal?

Several had to do with sex. While exploring my likes and dislikes, I certainly wasn’t keeping score against some arbitrary list. If I was, I could’ve added a few the author of that list had missed.

Overall, the general idea was for a woman to learn to be her own woman. I guess we all get there by our own road. So in the end, I had to write my own list.

My 40 List

1. Let myself fall in Love.
2. Let myself fall out of Love.
3. Get long fake nails
4. Hate them. Get rid of them.
5. Get a tattoo.
6. Love it. Get a second tattoo.
7. Dye my hair a color not found in nature
8. Write a book.
9. Let someone else read the unfinished draft.
10. Publish a book and not obsess over the sales.
11. Keep a journal every day for a year and go back to re-read it.
12. Recognize a mirror moment.
13. Hold that moment sacred without analyzing it.
14. Date a man old enough to be my father. Figure out why I needed to.
15. Write an angry letter to God. Let Him write back.
16. Sit God in an empty chair and give Him a piece of my mind. Switch chairs and see myself from His seat.
17. Love someone unconditionally.
18. Remember to experience the world with awe and wonder.
19. Write a prayer from the depths of my soul.
20. Allow someone other than God hear it prayed aloud.
21. Go on vacation alone to a place I’ve never been before.
22. Be still for twenty minutes a day.
23. Buy an impractical expensive pair of shoes.
24. Buy a meal for someone who is hungry and cold.
25. Never forget that person’s eyes.
26. Understand the 12 Steps.
27. Learn to recognize Karpman’s drama triangle. Stay away from the corners.
28. Ask the hard questions.
29. Accept that there aren’t always understandable answers.
30. Re-read Alice In Wonderland.
31. Find a trusted advisor.
32. Actually take their advice.
33. Speak my mind even when it gets me into trouble.
34. Explore my faith even if it means questioning the big stuff.
35. Figure out I answer only to God.
36. Go to Confession and admit to everything.
37. Bask in forgiveness and mercy.
38. Screw up again. Repeat 36 & 37.
39. Accept that I’m a work in progress.
40. Take 4 days to celebrate all of the above.

Life Lessons From Frozen Chicken

I have a problem with patience. Actually the problem is I don’t have much of it. I have a saying my kids know by heart: Patience is a virtue. It isn’t one of mine.

There’s a lot going on in my life lately. Too much of go go go and do do do are cutting into my quiet time to just be. I missed out on Mass last week thanks to the blizzard and I’d missed the Tuesday and Thursday Masses before the storm too. I was too tired and too stressed to go. I had too much to do. In the end though, instead of feeling like I’d accomplished more during that time, I felt more rushed and more exhausted. Guess what, more rushed plus more exhausted equals less patient. Not good. That four days spent snowed in was good for me but when it was over, I dove in and tried to make up time. It’s a silly thing really. Time comes and it goes. I don’t know how much I have. None of us do. I have no control over so many things that impact my time and yet what do I stress the most over? Time! It felt so good to go to Mass Sunday night but the ‘just be’ didn’t last long.

Monday was another one of those crazy days. I woke up with a blinding headache. I went to work. I got out early and rushed home for five minutes. It was just long enough to pick up the boys and rush to a scout event that involved lunch at McDonald’s then driving twenty minutes each way to tour a television station. The boys didn’t eat at McDonald’s. I couldn’t believe it. All the times they beg me to take them and this one time, they won’t eat. So on the way home from our television station tour, the first question was, “So what’s for lunch?” It was 3:00! We’d gone out for lunch. They didn’t eat and now they wanted lunch while I was figuring out what to cook for dinner. When we got home Eugene wanted a fried egg and ketchup sandwich. The toast had to be perfect golden brown. Then it had to be layered bread, ketchup, egg, ketchup, and bread. Andrew wanted a frozen French bread pizza. So despite the headache, I did my best short order cook impersonation.

Meanwhile, I still had to start dinner when all I really wanted to do was sit down and close my eyes for ten minutes. Eugene requested chicken soup. That was simple enough to suit me. I had some frozen chicken breast in the freezer. Now a patient person would put the frozen chicken breast, package and all into water to thaw a little. Not me. I decided to pry the chicken out of the foam package. It was frozen solid and stuck fast. I, who can’t open soda bottles, decided I would use brute force to free this solid ice bird from it’s foam tray prison. I’m not exactly sure how it happened but the next thing I knew, my thumb was stuck. It got wedged between the chicken and the foam. I couldn’t get it loose and now working one-handed I couldn’t get a good enough grip to pull the chicken off the trapped thumb. On top of that, it really hurt! I was getting frostbite on the fingertips of my right hand while trying to free the left thumb. I struggled for a few minutes and finally had to call for Andrew. “Andrew! Come in here! Hurry! My thumb is stuck under the chicken!” To his great credit, he managed to break the foam so I could pull the thumb out before he burst out laughing. We laughed until our bellies hurt and tears streamed down our cheeks.

Two minutes under hot water in the sink was all it took to get the rest of the tray unstuck from the chicken. As I chopped the carrots for the soup, I had some time to think about how ridiculous it was of me to try to force something that was obviously not meant to be forced. And for what? To save two minutes? Instead I ended up with very bruised thumb and a slightly bruised ego. How many other things in my life do I try to force? How much unnecessary pain do I cause myself? Is it really a lack of patience or is it really a need to control the uncontrollable?

It’s funny the things life can teach you. Who would believe I’d learn life lessons about patience and control from a frozen chicken? God has a twisted sense of humor. I like that about Him.