The Glorious Pay for Children's Play

I have told my kids since they were little that their job was to get dirty. They have always taken their work seriously, However, my son will often re-confirm that standing order just before he plunges into some muddy quagmire. I suspect he wants to make sure I have his back when we arrive on the deck with another ruined t-shirt stained beyond recognition. 

The Glorious Pay for Children's Play

The glorious pay for children’s play

Is found behind their ears.

On dusty brows and dirty cheeks

Streaked clean with laughter’s tears.

It’s dirt that’s pay for a youngster’s day

When he romps through bright sunshine.

Then it’s off to the tub for a hearty scrub

To wash the soil away,

And trade the beads acquired in play

For a ring round Mom’s white tub.  

Then off to dive in clothes-line-dried,

Sweet smelling, twin bed sheets. 

Warring with Teenagers

Five days out of seven I go to war with the most maddening race of people on the planet: the American Teenager. I just finished my 18^th tour of duty in my current theater and have slogged out of the trenches this time more ragged than usual. The little vampires had almost bled me dry. Then summer came and airlifted me out of the battle zone.

I don’t mind the hand to hand combat, the grappling in the mud over ideas, the squelching and throttling of teenage ignorance, and the thrashing about of their half-baked thoughts gasping for the sweet air of logic. I relish the blood and gore of students and teachers clashing in a battle of wits. That is the adrenaline high that keeps a good teacher coming back for more, coming back with a bigger and better pair of boots for stamping out their ignorance. The clash of ideas and the exchange of intellectual fire keep me wading back into the fray again and again.

But this year… this year felt like bludgeoning baby bunnies. This year felt like beating the proverbial dead horse. This year they discovered that my kryptonite is apathy. The little vermin went armadillo on me and curled up into a ball of Apathy and beat me down. Or rather I punched myself out like Apollo Creed on Rocky’s thick skull. There can be no grappling and squelching and throttling of anything that curls itself into an inert ball. All weapons are blunted against the round thickness of Apathy’s hide.

Or at least that’s the way it felt for most of my campaign against ignorance this past year. Having tried with all my might to pry the aggravating little armadillos open, I was spent. Then, in typical teenage fashion, they surprised me. As I read their last exam (a very long essay question), I began to see that my battle had not been in vain. I saw thoughts ---thought out thoughts ---coherently put forth on paper. Here at last was real, tangible evidence that their firewalls had been breached. Many of them actually learned some things. And then glory of glories, they were kind enough to say thoughtful, warm things about their experience in my class.

The truth of the matter is the more I read the kinds of things they had written, the more I realized that I really love my students. Of course they would never suspect that their responses on an English exam could be encouraging, could in many ways validate my whole year and send me to base camp with a fresh wind in my sails. They really screwed up at the end. Now I will be sharpening my sword and polishing my boots for tour of duty number 19 to stamp out teenage ignorance. Looking forward to the war. 

Boys Need Old Books

Boys in trouble need good books. Good old books. They need stories of heroes with swords and armor and desperate odds against them. They need stories of brave, honest, fierce men battling for what is right and good and honorable. The books on their shelves should stir their hearts to action, should motivate them to rescue the helpless and defend the weak and speak the truth with courage. Good old books teach honor. Boys need to witness honor so that they might grow to emulate it. Our world needs men of honor.

I don’t think it would be overstatement to say that King Arthur and the Elven lords of Tolkien rescued me time and again as a high school boy. They gave me laws to live by, a code. They pointed me in a direction and gave me surrogate fathers to live up to. When I read about the heroes who strode the pages of their books, I wanted to be them. They helped keep me out of really serious trouble.

So I say to fathers, defend the hearts and minds of your boys .Give your sons old books. Point them to the heroes of  legend who still live on in ink and paper. Then point them to the cross where the warrior king Jesus fought on our behalf, was slain and buried and rose again victorious over death and the grave. All the other stories are just shadows of His. His is the best old book, the best story, the one from which all good stories draw their power. 

On Being Married Twenty-five Years

Heather and I just recently hit the 25 year mark for our marriage. I love her attitude about it. “Honey, it’s just another year. What is so special about 25? Is it more important than 26?” Granted she is not a romantic, but I admire her practicality. Her comment is fraught with meaning. At the very least, it means I have at least one more year before she kicks me to the curb. But I know that statistically speaking, we are an anomaly. We lost a child to cancer---we should have already divorced. I suspect that if that couldn’t tear us apart there really isn’t much that could.

The good news for me is that I caught her young, before she had enough sense to suspect I wasn’t the greatest catch in the world. Now that she knows better, she also knows that twenty five years to train a man is way too much time to throw away in hopes of getting another one of higher quality. Besides, I am no fool either. The chances of me scoring another girl like her are zip. I went yard. If she leaves I am going with her.

I also think she suspects I love her. I laugh now at the sappy, moon-eyed love I used to declare for her when we were dating or the passionate, all consuming, conflagration I called love when we were first married. Twenty-five years later love is so much more steady, so much more informed in what matters most. I am married to a woman of noble character, tested in the fires, tenacious and loyal and loving. Once upon a time I just thought I loved her. Now I know I love HER.

I love this woman who reads my mind and tells me what to do, who has given me every truly good thing in my life, and who loses everything from her keys to her coffee cup. I’m not going anywhere. I suspect twenty-five years is just the under graduate program for how to love my wife. I’m gonna work on my masters for the next twenty-five years. 

I am Happy Here

This morning I took my coffee cup and my Bible out to the deck and realized once again how much I love this little place of ours. My wife Heather and I and our children live on this unimpressive 6 acres in a very small, frame house, not even 1,000 square feet until we closed in the back porch to create another room. We have an old barn made of oak with a rusty tin roof that houses the chicken coop, covers my lawn tractor and four-wheeler and keeps the feed dry.

It appraises now for even less than we paid for it because of the economy. But it would cost someone a great deal more than its appraised value to get me to consider parting with this place. Too much life has happened here. And too much death. All my children have called this place “Home”. We first moved here when Jacob was a little fella, and Allie was kicking her mother in the ribs from the inside.

Jacob died here. We moved away. It hurt too much to stay where every tree and every floor board were reminders of what we had lost. But when the pain had subsided enough, we moved back. We moved back because those same trees and floor boards were reminders. Only now the reminders called up more medicinal memories than malignant ones. We could remember happy smiles and riotous laughter and joyous war whoops. We could remember the triumphant spirit of our son and the infectious energy of our little girl. We could remember the hugs and kisses and bonfires and porch swings in the evening. What should have destroyed this place for us only infused it with the riches of memory.

Now when I have my coffee and read my Bible on that deck looking out past the barn to the pasture I feel the richness of tangible memory. The barn’s not just a barn and the chickens are not just chickens. The old hulk of the apple tree’s trunk and the rusty tin of the barn roof are more than physical. They make this place spiritual. They conjure up memories that minister to my soul. They make me pause and ponder the works of God in my life. They are Ebenezer stones to remind me of the blessings that come from both the triumphs and tragedies of this life.

I remember and I am happy here.