Expedition

I’ve been to the majestic mountains of the Pacific Northwest. I’ve watched the sun set on the “purple mountain majesties” of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. I’ve flown over Everest in Nepal. But there is something uniquely beautiful about the mountains here in New England. I know. I know. Those of you living in the west call our mountains here hills. That’s okay. They are beautiful hills. Especially in the fall, when they look like they are on fire with the breath-taking colors of autumn.

Well, after all the snow we’ve been getting, we have all been going a little stir-crazy here in the house. So I decided to take Micah and Jazz to the mountains for a serious climbing expedition. I wasn’t sure if they would be up to the task but they conquered three peaks in less than a day. We came back exhausted but fulfilled. I love the different perspective you get when you seem to be standing on top of the world. What a day!

The only sad part of the day was when we contemplated the thought that in just a few months these mountains will be gone. But the sadness quickly faded as we only had to walk a few feet from the mountains into our local Starbucks, which happened to be in the same parking lot.

Next week we’ll conquer a mighty river. Or is that the local drainage ditch filled with snow melting off the sidewalks and streets?

-Rob

Can this be true?

This is the question we randomly ask ourselves several times a week. Sometimes several times a day. Mostly in the morning, when we wake up to the tiniest of voices whispering from her bed, “Ba?”(Daddy) Or when she falls asleep in Christel’s arms during the afternoon and burrows in so close, as if she can’t get close enough. Nestled in like a baby bird under her mama’s wings. Home at last. Sometimes it’s when we watch her running or dancing or laughing with her brothers and sisters. Pure, unbridled joy, bursting forth like fountains. Or sometimes it’s in the quiet moments, with just a look from across the room. And there is the meeting of eyes…of souls. This was meant to be. We were meant to be together. Home. Family. Finally.

I asked the question many blogs ago…What is a greater celebration? The joy of finding, or the joy of being found? I have experienced both. My instinct is to say that the greater joy is in finding. But I am discovering that in the indescribable ache to find, and in the actual joy of finding, I am also being found. And it's a wondrous thing.

So, can this be true? Can this little person we call Honour, be home forever? In some ways it feels like she has always been here. And in other ways, like she just arrived today.

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

(Song: "The Promise" by Tracy Chapman)

So on this, your fourth birthday Honour…we celebrate your life, and love you more than you could ever know.

Mom and Dad


-Rob

So beautiful

“There was a star danced, and under that was I born” - Shakespeare

It was yesterday…oh wait, it was actually over 22 years ago that Christel and I walked into the doctor’s office suspecting that she might be pregnant for the first time. I will never forget it. We had been trying for a while and were so excited that this dream to have a child might actually become a reality. I sat in the waiting room with a few other people and waited for her as she went into the examining room for “the test”. Those ten minutes seemed like ten years. When she finally emerged from the examining room, she was a different woman. She was almost floating instead of walking. Her entire countenance had changed. Her face was lit up like Moses coming down off of the mountain after meeting God. And like Moses, she could have used a veil to cover her shining face to protect those who were in the waiting room. She looked with eyes sparkling, and said those words you remember forever; “We’re going to have a baby!” Our world changed in that moment and has never been the same since.

Fast forward 9 months. When the moment came to rush to the hospital, I wish that I can I say that I remained calm. I didn’t. I grabbed the suitcase near the door and ran out to the car like a bat out of hell. After jumping into the car and starting it, it took a minute to realize I had forgotten my laboring wife in the house. (No “typical guy” comments please.) To make a long story short, Christel was in labor for over 18 hours and the Lamaze techniques we learned to ease the pain, went out the window in the first hour. (Along with two nurses and some expensive hospital equipment. Ha!) Hint for soon-to-be first time fathers: During your wife's contractions, stay at least an arm's length away when telling her to focus and breathe.

Like a good husband, I stayed by Christel’s side and held her hand the whole time, stationing myself next to her head. Mostly because I didn’t really want to get too close to where the “action” was taking place because I didn’t know if I could handle it. I had heard the horror stories of the sturdiest of men dropping like flies. The moment came when the doctor said: “Rob this is it…you need to come down here and see this. The baby’s head is crowning.” CROWNING??!! What the heck??!! In laymen’s terms this means the baby’s head is coming out now. I assured the doctor that my wife REALLY needed me by her side…right where I was. The Doctor then demanded that I come down to see this miracle happen. I did. And it WAS a miracle.

We chose not to know the sex of our child until the baby was born. There aren’t words to describe the moment when the Doctor announced, “You have a baby girl!” Have you ever laughed and cried so hard at the same time that the sounds that come out don’t even sound human? Or maybe way too human?

Christel was so exhausted that the Doctor looked at me and said, “Rob, would you like to hold your daughter?” A side note: I had never held a baby in my life until that moment. Not because I wanted to do a noble thing and save the experience until that moment, but mostly because I was just afraid of holding babies. This was a fear instilled in me by others. It seemed that anytime someone with a new baby was around and they handed the baby to someone else to hold, they would usually give instructions as they handed it off; “make sure you hold it like this.” Make sure you support the head.”etc. I never held a baby because I was afraid of doing it wrong. What if the neck broke or the head dropped off because I held it wrong. No thank you. Knowing this, Christel, being the wise woman that she is, went out a few weeks before she was due, and bought a doll with a very heavy head that I could practice holding. So when the Doctor said, “Rob, would you like to hold your daughter?” I, with all the confidence in the world replied, “Yes I would!”

It was 22 years ago today that I held my daughter in my arms for the first time. I was not prepared for that moment. I had not memorized an eloquent speech, nor did I have any profound words. I just looked into those eyes still blinking at the bright lights of the delivery room, and with tears coming down my face (as they are now), kept stammering over and over again, “You are so beautiful. You are so beautiful. You are so beautiful.” This was all I could manage to say. There is a verse that states, “The mouth speaks from that which fills the heart.” That cold Sunday afternoon 22 years ago, a little baby girl named Amber filled our hearts. And they have been bursting ever since.

So Amber…on this special day…as we celebrate your birth from a distance, we want to say it to you again, just in case you have forgotten…You are so beautiful. You are so beautiful. You are so beautiful. When you look up into the sky tonight and see “your star” (the big one), remember that we love you bigger than the sky. Your life is a gift to us and to the world.

Amber-Born at halftime during the 1987 Superbowl. The NY Giants won!

Amber= Beautiful, thoughtful, gifted, compassionate, creative, authentic.

.

Dad and Mom

A dream coming true

“I have a dream…” Martin Luther King Jr.

I’ll never forget the first time that my son Micah recognized that I was a different color than him. He was about 5 years old. We were sitting on the couch cuddled together with our arms all tangled up. His beautiful brown arm and my very white arm looking like a half baked pretzel. He was just staring at our arms, and I could tell he was thinking really hard. Finally he looked up at me with complete sincerity, and with sympathy said; “Dad…you’re REALLY white”. He felt sorry for me. It was both a very funny moment and a beautiful one. He was completely innocent, untouched by any kind of prejudice. We have obviously had many great discussions since then. Being a multi-racial family affords natural opportunities all the time.

Last week I came home from my office to find Micah sitting on the floor looking through one of our photo books on the life of Martin Luther King Jr. The book was sitting on his lap open to the photos of the Birmingham riots. He sat staring at the infamous photo of people being blasted with fire hoses and attacked by police dogs because of the color of their skin. When I walked in, Micah looked up at me with the most heartbreaking, quizzical look of confusion. His eyes pleading for an answer…”Why?” His look just about brought me to my knees.

How do you explain hatred, violence and racism to a child, when it doesn’t make any sense to begin with? Just try explaining it, and you’ll find out how the explanations begin to sound as lame and insane as the actual acts and attitudes you’re attempting to unravel.

Fortunately, the last few days have taught us more than all of my feeble attempts with words of wisdom. On Monday (Martin Luther King Jr. day) we celebrated a man and his audacity to dream. And Tuesday we saw his dream inch another step closer to coming true. We sat watching the inauguration, with our arms around our kids, tears coming down our faces, and hearts about to burst at the thought that anything is possible. If only Dr. King could have seen this day. As of this week, there will be black children playing on the front lawn of the White House. And they're not just visiting. They LIVE there! We held our kids a little tighter when Elizabeth Alexander read the following lines from her poem;

“What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national.

Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.”

No doubt that these are extreme times. What we desperately need are extremists. Not right wing or left wing extremists. Not religious or political extremists. But the kind of extremist that Martin Luther King Jr. wrote about from that small jail cell in Birmingham;

“So the question is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist will we be. Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love?” (MLK)

I hope we choose love. For my children, and their future children’s sake.

-Rob

Hold on tight…or not.

Did you ever notice that some years sneak quietly in, with us hardly noticing, while others seem to begin with a roar? For us, 2009 broke through the gate like a race horse on steroids. (Do race horses take steroids?) In a few short weeks we have plunged into non stop craziness and intensity. From a dog and a Dad with busted up legs; to gut-wrenching heartbreak and unbridled joy. We are experiencing that same feeling that you get when you ride on an old wooden rollercoaster. Thrusting forward with break neck speed, you end up jerked around and shaken up so bad, that when you get off of it, you feel like you’ve just been in a fight. A bit battered and bruised…but still smiling.

I find it difficult to create “resolutions” or make “new starts”, etc, when I seem to be hanging on for dear life. So…how do we not just survive the ride, but really live it?

I think I’ve found an answer. It’s in something that Linford Detweiler wrote. Linford Detweiler is one half of the husband-wife band called Over the Rhine. If you've never heard of Over the Rhine, do yourself a favor and check them out. They are extraordinary and magical. And Linford is one of the most talented writers I have ever read.

He writes:

"I'm up here in the attic… the rest of the house is asleep, and I'm looking out the window on an unremarkable morning, stunned. I have found the secret of eternal life. I now know how I want to live and it's so obvious I don't know if I should risk telling you this secret or not, but I will. Before I can talk myself down.

I am going to die.

These few words, if I embrace them, will tell me what I must do with this gift of too-large life I've been given. Oh, but it's so hard to hear. I have to practice.

I am going to die. I... am going to die.

All of us here on this sweet terrain are terminal. I hold these words close and I am free.

I'm thirty-five, so by the law of averages I figure my life is half over. (I’m 46 so this is even more pertinent-Rob) Half of my life is virgin soil, untouched by any plow. Amazing. I was given a garden and I've only tilled up half of it. I was given a day, and the entire night remains intact, unlived. The bottle of wine, half empty. The book, half written.

Half over? And now life ups the ante and says, I am dimensional and careening and full of surprises. No man or woman knows me. No man or woman knows the day or the hour when the needle lifts from a particular spinning life, when the music ceases quite suddenly to play audibly. All quiet.

In other words, I can't say for sure that I've only travelled half the distance. I may be farther along and further in than I know. So to live a good day is to live that day as if it were my last. This key can unlock the double-bolted door of what it means to be truly alive. Or as my friend Jack is prone to say, It's our last night on earth. Again.

So yes, some days I flounder and lay about in the mud like a hog on valium. And I don't know why some days are so hard to redeem, to cash in. God looks down and says, This one's on me son. Enjoy. It's the gift of a brand new day or night and you'd think I'd make love to this day and we'd ride off into the sunset together, and I'd lean over and say, I'll never forget you. Ever.

But maybe the day sits yawning out in the car while I'm standing in line at the bank with a fistful of unpaid bills. Or the wistful new day walks in and her skin is glowing, she's lighting up the whole world and I'm thinking about filing my taxes, one of the cats just threw up, and the answering machine is full, blinking. The day wants to be swept off her feet and sometimes the best I can come up with is surfing the channels in some hotel room, half awake. Or maybe the day whispers, I came all this way for you, and it's a drive-thru for dinner?

But when I hold the given words close, which I do now increasingly, I become a student of life. I am given clues always now, and I try to listen. And the mundane begins to bleed together into a larger sense of purpose which I continue to discover. Some days I choose wisely, the hours are my lovers and I am heartened. The rest of the time, I forgive myself and try to smile. I am going to die. But I'm also going to live for awhile."

So, as we go hurtling through this year, and this kind of living becomes more of a reality for us, maybe…just maybe… we’ll find the courage throughout the year to let go of the safety bar a little more often, lift our arms into the air, and enjoy the ride. We may come out the other end a bit battered and bruised…but hopefully… still smiling.

Will we face each coming day like this?

Or like this?

Happy New Year. (We’ll post more family stuff with pics tomorrow).

-Rob