Homework and Playing
Bedtime
“Daddy, will you come lie with me?”
The Boy is having trouble falling asleep, and when this happens, there’s only one real solution: to climb into the bed with him and let him fall asleep curled in one’s arms.
I’ll admit that there was a time that I was growing tired of this. It was an almost nightly ritual, and with so many things I needed and wanted to do in the evening once the kids were asleep, I just wanted him to drift off as quickly as possible.
But over the last couple of years, another change has happened, which has altered my outlook on stretching out with the Boy in the evening. The Girl, now almost eleven, requires little to no bedtime assistance, and some nights, I have simply kissed her goodnight and turned out her light. She’s growing up, and in doing so, she’s developing her own evening routines and rhythms, and unlike the Boy, she no longer gets scared as she’s going to bed.
It struck me, then, that E will be following suit soon. No, not really all that soon, but soon enough. A few years and the whole bedtime ritual in the house will look entirely different than it does now. A few more years and neither one will really want K or me to lie in the bed with them, stroking their hair, whispering to them to lie still and go to sleep. And I will look back on this time when I could have done it with a tinge of regret that I didn’t do it more often.
Which is why, when the Boy asked if I would lie down with him, I did so without hesitation.
Lost Stars
E and I were lying on the bed in the master bedroom, reading. He always gets a book from school for his daily reading log, and often the book is leveled just right for reading with a parent: a few words he knows, enough short words that he can sound out, and a few words that he needs a lot of help with. Always a refrain of sorts, something easily remembered that he can just repeat.
Today’s book: My Dad and I.
We made it through the book, which was about all the things the narrator’s dad teaches him to do and all the things he teaches his dad to do, and E began teaching me about his star behavior system in school. Of course I knew all about it: I just had a conference with his teacher a few weeks ago, and we get a daily report about how many stars he ended the day with. But of course I let him explain it.
“We start with three stars, and if we do something wrong, we lose a star.” He paused, then added, “I haven’t lost a star yet this year.”
What will he do when he loses a star?
Updated B
The Girl got her report card today, and much to her surprise, she didn’t get that B. Turns out it was on the second quarter reporting period — which means she has a hole to dig herself out of. But at least the streak remains.
B
The Girl tomorrow will be getting the first B she’s ever made on a report card. It’s in social studies, and it weighs heavily on her.
“I got an A on the study guide,” she told me this evening, “but I got a C on the test.”
I don’t remember when I got my first B. Probably on my first report card. I can’t remember when I got my first C, but I think it was in junior high. I do remember getting the one D I ever received: earth science, ninth grade. I think I made all As and Bs in college, but if I had, I would have not graduated simply Cum Laude but rather Summa. Or so it seems to me.
Obviously grades were never all that important to me. Sure, I wanted to do well, but I didn’t beat myself up over it. I sat back and watched everyone who was interested battle for valedictorian and salutatorian honors, and I think I slipped into the top 10% of my class and was somewhat pleased with that.
The Girl’s biggest concern is remaining on the All A Honor Roll. Will this disqualify her for end of year honors? I had to admit that, despite being a teacher, I really didn’t know. Again, I never really worry too much about it.
My own students come to me sometimes worried about their grades. My English I Honors course has had the dubious distinction of being the first B for several students over the year. I express my regret, point out that I don’t give grades but that they earn grades, but in the back of my mind, I’m thinking, “It’s not such a big deal really.” For them it is: it’s a high school credit course, which means it will count toward their GPA.
I’ve had students’ parents have their children repeat English I in high school to get that A. I’ve even had one mother require her daughter repeat because her A wasn’t high enough. “Your class was much harder,” the girl wrote later in an email.
So I try to comfort L the best I can, suggesting that it’s not the end of the world. She dries her eyes and says, “I know.” But I know that doesn’t help all that much.
Fear
“A reading from the first chapter of Malachi,” she intones. It’s the first reading of the thirty-first Sunday of Ordinary Time during the “A” cycle, lectionary 151. She pauses and begins.
“A great King am I, says the LORD of hosts, / and my name will be feared among the nations.” And in my own mind, that which I can never say to my wife — the question. Why?
Why would God declare that his name will be feared? Why should we fear it? What kind of father would want his son to fear him? It makes God seem terribly petty, terribly immature, almost like a bully.
“And now, O priests, this commandment is for you:” And why then apply it to us? I recall the notion that we are all priests in some sense or another — isn’t that in one of the epistles? It’s terribly popular in Protestantism: the priesthood of believers.
If you do not listen,
if you do not lay it to heart,
to give glory to my name, says the LORD of hosts,
I will send a curse upon you
and of your blessing I will make a curse.
Again, why? Why does God seek glory? Why does he demand praise? Why does he require subjugation?
You have turned aside from the way,
and have caused many to falter by your instruction;
you have made void the covenant of Levi,
says the LORD of hosts.
What exactly did they do? How did they void the covenant? Was it just that they didn’t praise him? Or did they eat ham?
I, therefore, have made you contemptible
and base before all the people,
since you do not keep my ways,
but show partiality in your decisions.
Does this mean that God somehow influenced the opinions of others to make the people — his people, his chosen people — seem base to others? Isn’t that kind of cheating? And if he would do that, why not influence people to do good rather than the opposite?
Have we not all the one father?
Has not the one God created us?
Why then do we break faith with one another,
violating the covenant of our fathers?
Is this how a father treats his children?
I am falling away from the faith. I sit in Mass and think about it critically, as I’ve not done in years. I give myself licence to doubt.
It’s liberating.
Moving
I've a moved a few times, each time different. Moving to Poland in 1996 was accomplished with the help of two suitcases and a carry-on bag. Moving back to the States was similar. Moving from one apartment in Boston to another, just north of Boston in Mauldin, lasted one long day with multiple trips in the smallest available U-Haul van because it was all that was available on that day when everyone in the greater Boston area who is moving moves. Moving back to Poland in 2001 was like 1996: two suitcases and something under the seat in front of me. Back to the States in 2005 included several mailings and the usual airline baggage. From Ashville to Greenville was easier since we had a large U-Haul and several helping hands. But in all those adventures, I moved only a few thousand things at most. And that's counting each article of clothing and miscellany separately.
This week I moved 207,282 objects, plus several databases and a handful of email addresses. Changing hosts is a long involved process. Life goes on as usual, but one's online presence stops. Visits to traveling museums and Halloween come and go complete with pictures, but they all sit on one's computer until, at long last, it's all done and everything is back to normal.
Family and Culture
It's a common worry among conservatives these days -- and I suppose all days, all times -- that what is going on in popular culture is more of a corrupting influence on our children than it is a positive influence. I've written about it several times, and I've acted on it several times as well. Certain cartoons have been prohibited from the Girl's viewing due to the behavior modeled, and I've more than once worried about what kinds of interactions go on at school on the playground and at the lunch table.
But these are small worries, I see now.
I'm currently reading The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia by Orlando Figes -- the topic fairly succinctly described in that subtitle. The opening chapters deal with what life was like immediately after the 1917 October Revolution and the years immediately afterward. What strikes me is the double life everyone soon had to live. Because everyone at that time had grown up in the pre-revolutionary period, they still had a non-Bolshevik mindset. What if you didn't particularly agree with the Bolshevik principles? Could you have a mini-revolution in your family, raising your children to act one way and think another? Could you go against culture?
The simple answer is no. It was an enormous risk. What if your child accidentally blurts out in school something critical you said at the dinner table? Or worse, with the schools becoming the primary indoctrination mechanism for the children, what if your child drinks the Kool Aid and begins to see you as an anti-Soviet thought criminal? The book details accounts of both incidents occurring, so neither is wild speculation.
I think back to the uproar a few years ago about Obama's address to students. An acquaintance said, "I'm not letting Obama indoctrinate my child!" as if it could happen in one speech, some kind of magical brain washing that effectively changes a child in a few-minute address. I think of the email we received this week at school detailing the district's plan to let parents opt out of watching the inauguration: presumably some parents might have had the same fear about Trump. In both cases, such a naive view of what indoctrination means.
Trump and Obama
So it’s support Trump at all costs? Support him no matter what? One can’t be a conservative and criticize him?
The simple truth of the matter is that Trump has done so many things about which conservatives would have been absolutely livid had Obama done them that it leaves moderates like me scratching our heads, wondering where the moral steadfastness that Republicans so pride themselves on could have gone.
What if Obama had refused to release his tax returns? What if there were serious questions about Obama’s relationship with Russia? What if Obama, long before being president, had exhibited sexist, predatory behavior that had been recorded? What if Obama suggested that Fox News was fake news, the enemy of the American people? What if Obama had issued an executive order that the judiciary later restrained, and he’d begun attacking the credentials of the judge? What if Obama had made disparaging comments about the family of a slain soldier? What if Obama had lied again and again about the extent of his electoral victory? What if Obama had said that if one of his daughters wasn’t his daughter, he’d be dating her? What if Obama had refused to divest himself completely of business ventures that could create conflicts of interest when he’s president?
I mean, his lies about Putin are on video.
Any single one of these things, which range from trivial to cricitial, would have made Republicans livid had Obama done it. But to have done them all? “Impeachment” would have been on the lips of every Republican in the land. And yet these same conservatives are strangely okay with it when their side does it. What’s more, when conservatives do raise questions about it, they’re instantly labeled “traitor” and “rino.” There’s a word for that. And it troubles many of us to see it so brazenly on display.
Thoughts on Confession
1
“Is that all?”
My confessor had waited a few moments after I’d stopped speaking to ask that question. I sat in the confessional, my mind beginning to turn. I knew it was customary for priests to wait for a moment after the penitent finishes listing his sins, but with each priest it is different, and even if I hadn’t been the last penitent, even if he hadn’t seen me standing by the confessional as he came out and motioned me to go on in as he returned to his side, I could have discerned from his voice alone that this was the new parish priest, with whom I’d never confessed. “Is he thinking, ‘There’s no way that’s all this guy’s done’?” I wondered. “Should I say something?”
He sat silently for at least ten or fifteen seconds — which felt eternal — before he gently asked, “Is that all?”.
“Is that all?” I asked myself, mildly panicking that all my fears of seconds earlier were coming to fruition. Of course it’s not all. I could never confess all my shortcomings (read: sins), but the Church technically requires only that I confess mortal sins, and while we’re to include as many venial sins as we can remember, they’re just that: venial. I try, but I don’t try to cover them all, else we would be there for hours.
“Yes, Father, that’s all.” A pause. “All the mortal sins, that is.”
But was that all? The yardstick for a sin’s gravity is the Ten Commandments, and by that light, I’ve broken every single one of them, regardless of the actual sin. Whenever I commit a mortal sin, I’m putting my will and desires above God’s and thus making myself my own god, thereby breaking the first commandment. So in that sense, any sin automatically breaks the first commandment and is a mortal sin.
Less is sometimes more in confession, and I resisted the temptation to explain all the theological considerations that had just passed through my thoughts. Another silence.
2
The first time I went to confession, I requested a face-to-face meeting with the priest. Over the past year, participating in RCIA, I’d come to respect and trust Fr. G, and I knew that I could talk to him face-to-face about my shortcomings and feel comfortable doing so. Well, relatively comfortable: any time you’re talking to someone about the darker side of your soul, I’m sure it’s going to be a somewhat-stressful experience. Still, we met at his parish office and after we engaged in our typical small talk — “What are you reading?” type stuff — he put on his stole, made the sign of the cross and suggested we begin.
“Father, bless me, for I have sinned,” I began. I’d thought long about what to say at the beginning. I knew I technically had two options:
- Father, bless me, for I have sinned.
- Father, forgive me, for I have sinned.
Having grown up in a fairly anti-Catholic denomination and gone to a Protestant private college, I knew I only had one option, though. “Bless me” won out over “forgive me” for all the emotional associations I still had with it. Intellectual consent to the fact that the priest is not in fact forgiving sins of himself but acting in the place of Christ is one thing; dealing with the baggage associated with previous assumptions is quite another.
Fr. G dropped his head, closed his eyes, put his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands together, and listened. I finished. He still listened. There was a lingering silence, then finally he spoke.
“Well,” he began, and soon we were discussing some of the things I confessed, unforeseen and unimagined consequences, and how to avoid them in the future, then he said the formula of absolution:
God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
I’d gone the last fifteen years thinking there is no such thing as sin, and I’d gone all my life thinking, “Even if there is sin, I would never confess it to a priest.” And yet when it was done and Fr. G made the sign of the cross during the absolution, I felt strangely more peaceful than I’d ever have expected from something I’d only given intellectual consent to.
http://lifeteen.com/blog/my-side-of-the-confessional-what-is-it-like-for-a-priest/