Category — Faith

Unfortunately, I still don’t have those Official English Paper files from middle school, jr. high, and high school. I will one of these days, though, and I’ll share something from them when I do. In the meantime, how ’bout a couple writing samples from my baby book, which, for some reason, I do happen to have?

I was about five-years-old, maybe six, when I wrote these. As you can tell, I had great concern for both the animal kingdom and the Kingdom.

And lots of confusion about apostrophes, commas, and possessives. (But check out that semi-colon use, eh?)

I don’t think this first one is supposed to be a poem. My blue-crayon handwriting just took up a bunch of space per line. (I’ve preserved spelling, punctuation, and line-breaks.)

“Sam The dog”

to Dad

Sam is a dog.
Johny is his,s oner.
Johny play,s with
sam. and Sam
play,s with Johny.
Sam loves
Johny. and Johny
Loves sam.
Sam like,s cats; sam does
not clime fenses. Sam
is a boy dog. Sam
likes pepple too.

Later in the year, I figured out how to spell “fence” and the difference between an apostrophe and a comma. Apparently, I was also learning about using commas with conjunctions. I hope some instruction on pronouns and antecedents followed shortly.

(FYI, this story also included pencil illustrations of Tom, Sam, and the cross on a hill with flowers. There’s also an “I *heart* You” enclosed in a rectangle at the bottom of the page, though the recipient is unclear. Mom taped it to the back cover of my baby book, but, if you look closely, you can see some math work, involving dollar signs, on the other side of the paper.)

“Tom’s Cat”

Tom had a cat. His name was Sam. Sam was a good cat, but one day Tom fowned that he was on the fence and was chaseing a cat up a tree! Sam was a bad cat that day. But, God and Jesus helped him to be better because he died for us that we mite be saved, and that’s just what he did. And, that is how he got saved. And that was that!

As a bonus, here’s a poem (of mine) from 2003 that I’m not particularly fond of, but I’ll share it anyway, because, thematically, it fits well in this post and eliminates any doubts about the authorship of the earlier pieces. (Relax. It’s just a poem, not a theological statement.)

Searching for Maverick at Midnight

The night we left town for
a restaurant where no one
we knew could find us,
my sister called to say
Maverick was missing.

You tried to convince me
he was alive, we wouldn’t
stumble over his body,
the tips of his fur lifting
and falling with the wind
of passing cars. You said
wait until morning, we’d
get a call from the shelter.

Still, you gave up the dinner
we’d traveled three hours for,
headed back to Abilene.

We circled the neighborhood
with the windows down,
slower at my command,
the flashlight illuminating alleys
the moon couldn’t touch.
You didn’t complain about
the cold or ask me to stop
whispering his name, remind me
dogs aren’t worth crying over.

You didn’t laugh when I
suggested prayer, reverting back
to eight years old. You didn’t
scold me for believing dogs
have souls, and even if they don’t,
a God as big as ours could save
the soulless if he wanted,
could whisper one word
and raise a dog from the dead,
make a hole in the dark sky
with the slightest gust of wind,
let light shine right on Maverick.

You just smiled at me for loving
dogs as much as people and
pulled your coat tighter, aimed
the headlights down another road.

Chris and I were talking the other night about our parents as grandparents. I mentioned that I thought mine have done a pretty good job of not “parenting me through parenthood.” My in-laws haven’t caused trouble either, but, to be honest, I expected my parents to have a harder time.

I’m sure my mom has wanted to jump in. She’s told me more than once that it’s time to start carrying a wooden spoon so I can “tear that baby’s hiney up” any time I want. And just last weekend I coaxed a little criticism out of her over lunch at La Madeline, where Caelyn helped herself to individual servings of Land O’ Lakes sans bread. My dad thought this was brilliant: “Would you like a little more butter, Caelyn? Katy, go get her another one!” My mom couldn’t keep the disgusted look off her face. I couldn’t help but comment, “Caelyn, your Grammi Roo’s makin’ that face because there’s no way she’d have let your mommy do what you’re doing.”

Mom straightened up in her chair, “You got that right! But I’m not the one who will have to deal with the consequences.”

True, but I figure 2 tablespoons of butter now and then can’t do any more harm than the daily ding-dongs that showed up in my lunch.

Anyway, the butter incident is actually what sparked the parents as grandparents talk. Truthfully, while I did expect restraint to be difficult for my mom, I still anticipated it because I knew that my dad would be hard-pressed to let her offer more than casual advice: “Ruth, you’ve got to let them make their own mistakes and learn from them.” And my mom would be hard-pressed to not do whatever my dad said.

(This was not my dad’s stance while I was growing up. His policy states that prevention, protection, and intervention are always the right option until a child reaches 21. At that point, if said child is benefitting from your money via higher education, you retain the right to lay down the law on the things that destroy a person’s life, the greatest of which would be smoking.)

So, even though I haven’t done a lot of things they way they would, they’ve done a good job of not letting it get to them. I’m afraid, though, that the time will come when I’ll cross a line and my mom, fearing the spiritual demise of her grandbaby, will have to say something.

I love my parents. I’m glad for their example, and I welcome their counsel and prayers. But (I’ve mentioned before) that we are very different people; we have different parenting styles too. And, while we mainly have the same values, we disagree on a few big issues. So, naturally, I plan on approaching some things differently than they did. If there really is a “line,” I figure it’ll be crossed when we get to those issues. And I figure two of the biggest stink-raisers will be sex (which I’ve written about here) and rock n’ roll (which I’ve written about here and here).

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In case you can’t tell by the title, you and I are in the midst of another Adventure in Senseless Blogging! Truth be told, the topic of this post absolutely could make for serious bloggin’. But, honestly, I’m not in the state to do much serious blogging.

I’ll be upfront with you on another point too. The title of this post addresses what I wish I was really writing about but feel conflicted about whether or not I should. Basically, I’m being cryptic and taking advantage of you. But at least I’m being honest about it, right?

If you disagree, now would be the time to bail. . . .

So my family was in town last week. Two of those days, Mom and I watched my niece so my sister could go to a conference. While Caelyn and Claire napped, Mom and I sat in the living room. I got out the laptop. She got out a blanket.

“You takin’ a nap, too?”

Mom looked at me with the same face she makes when the waiter at Abuelo’s asks if we want “dessert nachos,” and she wants some but doesn’t want to be the one to say it: “Maybe, unless someone wants to talk to me.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know. What are you reading about?” she hinted, with raised eyebrows.

I wasn’t reading anything, but I said I was thinking about some personality stuff online that I’d checked out recently: “You wanna take a test?”

“Sure!”

And that’s how we ended up spending the next two afternoons personality testing. I started her off with the Enneagram. Mom was uncomfortable with the open-endedness of the questions. She wanted me to further define about 70% of them. In the end, she came out as a One. (If I’m not mistaken, that’s what I predicted.)

Personally, I think that assessment is pretty accurate. (I’m trusting you to have the skills to Google “Enneagram One” and any other terms I might toss in.) But Mom wasn’t so convinced:

“Are you sure this is THE VERY BEST personality test?”

I told her that I really like it, but to understand the Enneagram and get the most out of it, you have to do more than just take a test. You’ve got to really consider it, because the Enneagram isn’t just about personality traits. It’s about motivation.

She looked at me dubiously, “What about that test Jennifer made Kevin take? Can you give me that one?”

I assumed she meant the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, which I informed her could be taken for free in short form, but not in full-form. And, just like that, we were out of the Enneagram and into Jung.

It’s not surprising that she’s an (extreme on every trait) ESTJ. When Dad got back from the mall, she talked him into taking the test too. He turned up ISTJ. My sister’s an ESTJ.

And, me? I’m a (fairly extreme on every trait) INFP. (No wonder I’m a Four.)

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Between my blogging history, Twitter, and context clues, you probably already know, but today is Caelyn’s 2nd birthday. We’re having a party this Saturday with the immediate and extended fam, but it was on this date two years ago in an operating room that a doctor peeked over the sheet at an incredibly swollen me and said, “Okay, it’s gonna feel like there’s an elephant on your chest. Ready?” and then drew his elbow way back past his ear and shoved Caelyn’s head out of my ribcage.

Caelyn doesn’t know today’s her birthday. I burst into her room this morning with a huge smile and a, “HEY! IT’S YOUR BIRTHDAY!” She just smiled, pointed at her posterior, and said, “Biper?”

But, still, I couldn’t let the day go uncelebrated, could I?

Birthday Stop No. 2

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Yesterday was our 4th anniversary. (Yes, it was also Juneteenth.) To celebrate, we enlisted Cristin to babysit and had dinner at The Melting Pot in Addison, where we ate on the night we got engaged. Then we caught The Promotion at the Angelika Film Center at The Shops at Legacy and wrapped the night with a stroll and two double-sized cappuccinos.

I have to tell ya. It was pretty darn nice. We dressed up and everything! And we haven’t done that for a date, since, well, the last time we had dinner at The Melting Pot.

Over fondue, we tried to recall how we’ve marked our previous anniversaries:

1. We were still in Abilene. We know we ate crab at Red Lobster. We think we purchased and watched Jurassic Park in bed with the top layer of our wedding cake.

2. I was huge. Caelyn only had 11 more days of sweet womb time. We had crab again. Neither of us remembers what happened afterwards. Maybe we came home & I fell right to sleep. Maybe we went to the theater. If we did, we can’t remember what we saw. I think it came down to Cars or Nacho Libre, and we saw the former because of the time. (I STILL haven’t seen Nacho Libre.) Or maybe it was Mission Impossible: III. Last night we were thinking we saw Superman Returns, but we actually caught that one two days before Caelyn arrived.

3. We did a back-to-back double feature with Ocean’s Thirteen and Mister Brooks, after packing it away at Saltgrass.

I know what you’re thinking. Since we’re obviously not mondo-anniversary celebrators, why would we have a big-to-do date for the 4th? It’s not like 4 is 5 or 10 or 35.

Honestly, we didn’t have a reason, other than the fact that I had told Chris that I thought he ought to take me back to The Melting Pot if and when that unforgiving black skirt I wore on our engagement night fit again, and we both could’ve more than used the retreat from the norm.

So we made a night of it.

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