There but for the grace of God…

Last night I was watching my oldest walk through the family room.  It is a nightly ritual – I come home from work, cook dinner, we clean up from dinner, and then, when the last bubble from the last bit of suds isn’t even popped, Michael will venture out into the kitchen and shove his head into the pantry.

Unlike me, he is lean and athletic.  Oh sure, I suppose there was a day when you might have said I bordered on athletic.  I played baseball, golf, and softball and I lettered in tennis in high school.  But never in my life would I have ever been described as “lean.”

Michael on the other hand is lean and strong.  When he went for his snorkeling badge at Boy Scouts his scout leader was worried that whenever he got into the pool he sunk like a lawn dart.  No fat on the kid whatsoever. SO maybe I shouldn’t worry so much about the constant grazing, but I do.

Every night I watch him go through the house, growing by the day, with his cheery smile and perfect posture.  In the blink of an eye he has gone from being my cute little side-kick to being every inch of 5 feet tall and encroaching on the frontier of adolescence.  He is well on his way to being a fine young man.  I watch him move through his world and I just want everything to slow down. He teeters on the abyss of puberty.  He has been such an excellent boy that I long desperately for that little boy to hang around just a bit longer.

And the girl, his sister – the four year old who I am certain will some day be a pharaoh somewhere; I watch her and it is obvious that she is growing by leaps and bounds.  The pajamas she got for Christmas are now fitting her about like they are clamdiggers.  Two weeks ago I stood at the bottom of the stairs and watched her descend early on a Saturday morning.  My brain literally came to life in my head and, as if it had a separate personality, began hammering away on every frequency shouting to me an urgent message to remember that moment, to freeze its quiet and rare beauty forever in some less traveled part of my brain.  There she stood, stuffed animal and pillow in arms and slippers on feet she tip-toed down the stairs, gave me a hug, and whispered “good morning daddy, I love you.  How’dya sleep/”

Again I told myself to stretch out time, play the four corner offense, use every second of life’s shot clock to my advantage.  I cannot believe the great good fortune I have to just share in the beauty of these two kids.

So it was this morning when we all awoke to the news of Japan’s horrible earthquake and the subsequent devastation of the resulting tsunami that I was reminded to take nothing for granted.  The kids all got extra hugs and kisses this morning.  The “I love yous” were pronounced and embellished with good eye contact and a warm embrace. With each kid I indulged in a final intoxicating inhalation of their hair.

I couldn’t get over the haunting vision of that mass of debris moving relentlessly in slow but unstoppable motion across the Japanese countryside.  It reminded me that there is no stopping nature.  There is no pause button while you gather your thoughts, collect your wits, or rearrange your plan.  Living is doing, loving is a deliberate commitment, and legacy is a luxury not all are guaranteed.

So today, in the shadow of great suffering and loss of life in Japan, my only plan is to kiss those two little farts squarely on their faces, tousle their hair, hug them like there is no tomorrow and to let them stay up munching popcorn until their mom says it’s way too late for little people to be up.  Tomorrow we wake up to a day of ballet, and baseball camp, and then a family outing to the movies. Because what we do becomes what we are, and what we are eventually becomes what we were.  So today we will honor those in Japan and everywhere, by making the most of our lives together. Today we will live reverently the words “there, but for the Grace of God, go I.”

We’ll laugh and hug and share inside jokes.  And that will be the only plan.  The solitary mission – to revel in each other.  Because today is all that any of us are ever promised – no matter how much we wish for it to slow down, to stop, to live on forever unchanged.  Today is the best chance we’ll ever have to be the best we can be to each other.

Wherever you are today, thanks for stopping in and sharing this moment with me and my family.  I hope you are well and that those you hold dear are safe and free from harm.  Wherever you are today, I hope you take a minute or two to find the best you can be to those you love, and then to make it a plan to be that.

Dennis

smalltwondad@hotmail.com    

How to help (I have not checked all of these out, this list is reposted from another blog):

United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR) – This is the United Methodist Church’s disaster response organization, and is one of the best church-based response groups in the world. Donations can be accepted through the International Disaster Relief fund.

Red Cross: The American Red Cross, according to its website, have opened up emergency operation centers. Donations to relief efforts can be made here. It may also be appropriate to look into the International Federation of Red Cross, as well. You can also try the Japanese Red Cross Society here. (However, I am not finding a solid place to donate just yet to the Japanese Red Cross, which is understandable.)

AmeriCares: You can donate to relief efforts that are ongoing by AmeriCares by clicking here.

World Relief: You can donate to relief efforts here.

World Vision: According to the organization’s website, the group is preparing to respond to the disaster. You can make a donation by clicking here.

Samaritan’s Purse: The North Carolina-based organization is still considering what relief efforts it will undertake, but you can donate here.

Operation Blessing International: The organization says it has teams standing by to respond. There is a Disaster Relief fund that you can contribute to here.

Giving Children Hope: This California-based organization is in the process of sending emergency relief to Japan. You can donate here.

For a more general list of disaster relief organizations, you can click here.

Out of the mouths of parents; the improbable things we say in a week's time

There is nothing so capable of humbling any of us as being parents.  Think of it this way, in all of the James Bond movies, did you ever see him sitting at the dining room table trying to explain compound fractions to a 10 year old?  Did you ever see him trying to get a four year old from the front door to the back seat of his Aston Martin without having her jump in every snow bank and mud puddle between the two points?  No - Hollywood is a dream world - they would never show old 007 completely over his head; at the mercy of two kids he adores yet who drive him to say stupid things. He gets all the easy stuff.

Parenting causes you to kind of reinvent yourself, doesn't it?  I love to tease that I was cool at one time in my life.  My memories of college are that as a college senior I was somehow funny - a bit of a character.  Now, 23 years later, I am 100% caricature.  The precise thought of how really odd this parenting thing would be first struck me the day I lifted my two year old son up in the middle of a crowded restaurant, held his tiny little backside up to my face, whiffed, and then proclaimed to his mother "He's fine!"  When I realized that I did this with the same ease and fluidity of motion as I do putting on my coat or flipping on the computer I knew then that my world would be forever changed.

I also knew at that time, based on the two distinct groups of people I noticed staring at me as I lowered my giggling son; those, mouths agape, staring in disbelief at my complete lack of couth, and those meeting my gaze and nodding in silent agreement - the parents - that I was joining a select group of hearty adventurists.

Since that day I have been barfed on, peed on, pooped on, cried upon, searched the skate park for shards of two broken teeth, and it seems to me that every sweatshirt I own has at one time or another been a welcome hanky to a kid with a sinus infection.  I have learned more about Rota-virus and the differences in boogers than most epidemiologists and have along the way said some things that, for lack of a better word, make me feel like an idiot.

So today, an experiment - I have tried here to isolate the most idiotic, absurd, maddening words and phrases and exchanges occurring within the four walls of my home for the last week.

1.  "Hey you - whatever your name is...please don't color the cat."  You can never remember their names when you really need to.  Most days I call them "Moe and Larry."  Yes, I am aware one of them is a girl...

2.  "Whose poop is this?" (like I was gonna call "dibs" or something...).

3.  To my ten year old, who seems to be on some kind of iPod sponsored life support - "When I was a kid, iPod Touch was called a baseball mitt."

4.  "Not all farts are funny..." (to my son and his 11 year old cousin)

5.  "Hey, you know what?" (said to the same kid standing in my kitchen staring blankly at the open maw of a dishwasher waiting to be filled.
"What?" He says back to me, in a trance...
"Your "not helping me" (air quotes installed)...it's not helping me..."

6.  "I've told you a million times to keep your hands to yourself!  Now get over here and give your sister a hug and kiss goodnight..."

7.  "There's nothing coming out of your closet.  I'm the scariest thing in this house and I am right here - You're fine so go back to bed!"

8.  "Did you toot?" (there were only two of us in the car and I was pretty sure it wasn't me who dealt it).

9.  "Don't you point that sword at your sister!"  Yes, we have swords - plural.  And why did I say "don't point that at her" when he was across the room?  Was I afraid it was going to go off accidentally while he was cleaning it or something?

10.  "Eat your dinner"  This comment in and of itself is neither silly nor absurd.  What is both silly and absurd is that I would have to say it 92 times in a single meal to my four year old.  I can't wait for her to master reading so I can just get it printed on a sweatshirt and be done with it.

11.  "What do you mean you left your shirt at school?  Didn't you notice you weren't wearing one when you got on the bus to come home?"  (this was absolutely one of my favorite "Dad" moments ever - it was from last year, not last week, but a good one none the less. :-) Just being there when he skinned off his coat like it was perfectly normal to come home from school without his shirt.  God I love that boy :-)

12.  To either of them, several times during the course of the week "whatwereyoudoinganddon'tyoudaresayIdon'tknow?!" (comes out as all one word a million miles an hour.  Have to say it all at once and quickly otherwise they get two or three seconds to think up a plausible lie).

13.  To no one in particular "Who wrote on the wall by the bathroom...?"  Silence, silence, silence....then comes a wee little squeaky voice two rooms away "well....it could have been Michael...or maybe a monster...but I probably think it was Michael...it sure wasn't me...." Suggesting it might have been a monster was actually a very wise gambit for a girl only four years old. The offending graffiti was right by the basement stairs, and we all know that's where most of the monsters live.

14.  This next one was more Kristin than me - Wednesday night we had to take our cat, the brown one, to the vet.  Turns out she is kind of pretty sick.  I actually feel bad for her.  So, it was a tough night all around.  So after making a stop for some cat things to make the brown one more comfortable, I decided I was too tired to cook when we got home.  "I'll call for Chinese" I said.

So I place the order for delivery and we drive home. 25 minutes later the doorbell rings and the 4 year old races to get it. Looking out the door she announces "DAD! It's the Chinese, they're here!"  The delivery man was, you guessed it, Chinese.

15.  And the all time topper in this category comes from my dad, to me, when I was questioning him about genetics and his family.  His father and my grandmother were divorced when my father was two.  So I never knew my grandfather on my dad's side.

When we were pregnant with our oldest, the topic turned to genetics over dinner one night and I am afraid my dad got a bit defensive at Outback steak house.  Tired of the topic, he eventually slammed his hand down on the table, palm down, resulting a terrific clattering of dishes and silverware, and proclaimed:

"This is bullsh*t!" he growled, "your genes start with me!"  I cherish that memory - so wonderfully him <3

So thanks for stopping by my blog today.  I hope wherever you are or whoever you are with; you are sharing time with people whose company delights you and whose future development is so important and vital to you that the urgency of it causes you to say improbably silly things.

Dennis
smalltowndad@hotmail.com

Eat your potatoes...

I don't think I am talking out of school by sharing the fact that I am the cook in my family.  My wife, beholden of an arsenal of amazing skills upon which we desperately rely to run our home, has never been the cook.

This is as opposed to me, who grew up the third son of two working parents who commuted from the metro Detroit area to the rolling countryside of Livingston county five days a week.  The easiest way for me to mitigate all of the trouble I got into as a kid was to be the family cook and have dinner under way for them by the time they got home.

Pretty hard to yell and scream too much about the broken window or C+ on that history test when the same culprit who wrought that mischief is also responsible for the beef stew and bread now warming you from head to toe, isn't it?  So, as it turned out, I learned to cook at an early age.

20 years and two kids later, I am still cooking but for a different family.  My own family. There is my wife, with her sophisticated and diverse pallet - she eats things that I would never consider.  Then there is me - if it didn't have parents, what's the sense of eating it?  Every meal in my mind needs a meat, a vegetable and some other thing (usually pasta, rice, or potatoes).  Simple, old fashioned, probably not on whatever list of healthy eating is in the back of the mompetition cookbook, but what the heck - these are my kids not yours ;-)

And then there are the children.

It would be cheaper for me to feed these children if I just opened the pantry to let them graze and then walked right out to the garage and threw a ten dollar bill into Captain Curby (our dumpster). 

When my son was a very little boy, he would go on these hunger strikes - weeks at a time without eating anything.  Usually, after a couple of weeks of no eating, I would prepare for him a platter spaghetti with meat sauce larger than anything a grown man would eat, and leave him in the kitchen.  He would replenish, like an Anaconda eating a gazelle, and then spend the next two weeks digesting.  And who am I to question him, really.  I always tease him that he got the six-pack abs and I got the keg - so what the heck do I know about eating anyway?

And the girl - the master of culinary disaster, the queen of no plate clean - she hasn't met the meal she won't waste entirely.  The only secret in getting her to eat is to just withhold all food from her until about 9:00 o'clock at night.  Then place a well balanced meal down in front of her and she'll eat almost anything on her plate.  But if I left it up to her, she would survive exclusively on chocolate milk, egg noodles, and black olives.

Two nights ago, dinner was chicken dinosaur nuggets (thank you Sams Club for this modern day equivalency of Mrs. Paul's fishsticks), egg noodles with a little chicken gravy mixed in, and fresh Brussels Sprouts.  In cleaning up after the meal, I was like an archaeologist unraveling the mysteries of an ancient civilization.  "Here, at the head of the table, sat the matriarch.  You can tell that because there isn't a morsel of wasted food (obviously she has a keen eye on the budget) and the lipstick on her beer bottle is still warm." 

"...And here, at the other end of the table, obviously sat the man.  You can tell that because the seat is molded to a perfect mirror image of his ample butt and there is a contraband empty bottle of Diet Pepsi next to his seat. His plate, too, is clean."

Now comes the tricky part - "...this seat here obviously belonged to someone with a serious Brussels Sprout addiction.  The remains of 25 - 30 fresh petit cabbage' are strewn around his eating place.  He is obviously fit as he did not touch his noodles and is a bit of a ketchup addict.  High fructose, water to drink, sprouts - this seat belongs to a growing boy with the energy level of your average Corvette.

And here, across from him, there might be a plate underneath this pile of toys somewhere.  Who knew they made so many PollyPockets?  But if you gingerly set them aside, you can find a plate and notice that it is absent any hint of noodles.  Either she didn't have any, or she has actually licked that part of the plate clean where her noodles were.  And marvel at how artful she was in this endeavor because the chicken dinosaurs and Brussels Sprouts have not been disturbed at all.  Observe there is a weird five-oval pattern repeating itself formed of some kind of dark juice."  Sniff....Sniff..."...it appears to be olive juice and the marks almost look like this girl had olives on the ends of every one of her fingers for the entire meal.  Without a doubt this is the baby of the family.  She must burn calories like an aircraft carrier burns uranium because the chair she sits in is about 4 inches from the table..."

Yep - that was two nights ago.  My kids' two plates at the end of that meal actually resembled the yin/yang image - the exact inverse of each other.  Michael left all of his noodles, consuming only sprouts and chicken, and Kristin ate only her noodles, leaving chicken and sprouts.

So the following night, my patience now very thin with the amount of wasted food, I made only two things.  Oven roasted Italian chicken (which was fantastic by the way) and au gratin potatoes.  They didn't know what to make of the potatoes before them, they were potatoes, but yellow in a delightful, magical sauce.  And there wasn't a single olive on the table.  The chicken they easily recognized.  Michael scarfed his down smothered in...Ketchup - of course.  Kristin, shoved hers around her plate without eating a bite.

After about a half hour of family time, the conversation turned to the actual meal before them.  As mine was happily digesting somewhere beneath my equator, I had plenty of time to focus on them.  The conversation went something like this:

Me:  "...eat your potatoes."

Michael: "I hate my potatoes."

Me, slowing down and enunciating every word individually: "Eat. Your. Potatoes."

Michael - acting like I told him to go streak at the mall: "DAD! I hate these potatoes."

Me quickly changing into my Dad: "I don't care what you hate, eat those potatoes."

Michael, quickly morphing into a modern version of a 10 year old me: "What?! You don't care if I die?"

Me, my impression of my father now in a full open-field sprint:  "Lookit, mister, you won't die unless you don't eat those potatoes..."

Kristin, my angel: "Dad, don't be mean to Michael."

Me - to Kristin, feeling that she is somehow less angelic than she was 30 seconds ago: "You eat your potatoes too."

Both of them, loudly and in unison as if this was a rehearsed skit: "We hate these potatoes!"

Me, staring at their mother who is now smiling and rolling her eyes at me: "This isn't a restaurant, no one cares what you hate. Eat them..."

Michael, making a face and gagging hard: "ugh, I might throw up."

Michael's mom, cooly sipping the last remnants of her Labatts : "Don't hit the potatoes...."

I was reminded of a nearly identical scene 40 years in my rearview mirror.  My dad made a huge meal of spaghetti, salad, bread, black olives and me and my brothers, each two years older than the other with me being the youngest, screwed around for our entire meal until the pasta and sauce on our plates was stone cold.  I couldn't eat it no matter what threats of violence Sergeant Rock hurled at me and, when the first full forkload of cold spaghetti hit my lips, I threw up everywhere.  I remember it well because I got smacked once and sent to my room without having to eat it.  :-) 

It will be a couple of years yet before Michael is allowed to access the computer with enough freedom to find these pages, so I can admit that I have been in his shoes.  The only way he was getting out of eating those potatoes was to actually play the barf card once he threatened it.  Oh sure, I got belted once, but I didn't have to eat cold spaghetti. 

So, wherever you are this night, I hope you have good (warm) food prepared for you by someone who loves you, fine spirits made glad by the company you keep, and the delights of being part of a family to keep you invigorated and feeling vital and making memories that will last a lifetime.

Thanks for stopping by my blog today!

Dennis
smalltowndad@hotmail.com

Small Town Mompetitions

Recently I was reminded of the nature of competition.  The exact details aren't really important.  An old friend (female) was having some issues with a circle of women involved in a civic project.  One said the wrong thing to another, the other took offense thinking that her child, about whom the comment had been made, was slighted and it was on - the brawl to end it all, the war to settle the score - the Mompetition.

It's the same all over, isn't it? A group of moms is thrown together under whatever circumstances and it won't be long until it is obvious that one parent favors her child over another for some arbitrary reason. Maybe she seeks an advantage for her child over something pointless or perhaps says the wrong thing to another parent that betrays a previously closely held view of the world that, once aired publicly, changes things permanently,

"Mompetition" is a word that maybe you haven't heard of before.  I hadn't heard of it until an internet video making the rounds last week made me laugh out loud. The Urban Dictionary (a favorite site) defines mompetition as:

The one-up rivalry that moms play making their child seem better, smarter, and/ or more advanced than yours. May involve two or more moms and any number of children, even full-grown.

Mompetitions can transcend issues involving kids too - who has the nicest house, who is part of the "in crowd," vacations, husbands, money - all of the really toxic things that can ruin friendships.  But it's when  the kids get involved that things get especially tough.  Is there anything that makes us feel more vulnerable than our kids? Which kids made the team, made the grades, got the preferred teacher, etc.  That all goes hand-in-glove with the dreaded mompetition.

It's natural for us as people to want to cheer, and who better to cheer for than our own kids?  But, sometimes I wonder at what expense comes the mompetition or if the collective expectations about these competitions are reasonable.

I am not a mom, so I don't pretend to be an expert on these issues. My most relevant experience in understanding the dynamics here comes from my background in employment mediation.  In mediation, to solve a problem or quiet a controversy, you try and pry away the personal hard feelings central to a dispute and look at whose expectations are at least justified, then determine from those justified expectations which are at least reasonable and which ones aren't.  Most times if you take this patient approach and then look hard enough you can find a win/win scenario. 


In applying this rationale to the Alpha Mom in full bloom, you have to try and understand what she is competing with.  If the Alpha Mompetitor could step back and refine her understanding of competition to see that the competition is no less keen or compelling when it is focused inward, then the interpersonal relationships affecting that mom will be stronger, more enduring.

We all like winning, and I am no different when it comes to my kid winning. It's just that I believe in teaching the kids to compete against their own expectations and beliefs - to achieve at a level higher than they previously believed they could achieve. I also believe in teaching the kids to help others along the way.  It's been my experience that that is the hallmark of every great leader I have known - that they bring others along with them - get them to achieve more not by dominating them, but by teaching them, helping them.

If you always give your best, then the outcomes will take care of themselves. Achievements aren't diluted in the least if they don't come at the expense of another; but are instead leveraged on previous performance.

I get it; we all need to feel good about something - our jobs, our kids, our homes.  We all want some magic barometer that tells us that what we are getting out of life is somehow on par with what we are putting into it. And the easiest way to do that is to measure ourselves against someone in our similar situation.  Moms with kids in the same class; breast-feeding versus non-breast feeding moms, moms who vaccinate, etc.

But when competition is applied to the interpersonal relationships of the fairer sex, well there is a lurking danger with this kind of thinking. From where I sit, there is just something different about the way women communicate that turbo-charges this issue.

It is probably true, in general terms, that men practice friendliness and women practice friendships.  And there is some research that actually support this.  Men, in their general bucolic stupor, are quite capable of suffering the clumsy interpersonal affronts normal to relationships with far less intensity than are women. The empty-headed comment is made and then forgotten just as fast.

Disclaimer: I am saying "I think" here because I don't want to get in trouble at home or with my female relatives or friends. but secretly, I feel like I know this to be true.  As a man, I am just that dense - most times when someone is being insulting, or gossipy, mean-spirited or judgmental, I am clueless.  Generally speaking, it has been my experience in mediating conflicts that women are far more intuitive, more adept at seeing into the many layers of relationships and communications to pick up subtle things. I believe there are many circumstances where this intuition is a strength.  But, it also makes them far more susceptible to the harmful long term effects from the mompetitions.

So, despite having just learned the word, I can say with certainty that I don't much like the mompetitions

These mompetitions leave people wondering "what was won here?"  In many cases it is glaringly obvious what was lost:  trust, friendship, important affiliations and support networks.  Esteem.  It is certain that the mompetitions don't warm anyone's life and that the victories they bring to the mompetitors are transient at best.

In considering this issue, I am reminded of the Chinese proverb:

The tree long remembers what the axe soon forgets.

The axe thinks "no big deal, I am an axe.  I'm just doing my axe thing...."  But of the tree; I just wonder how long the tree will bear the mark of the axe just doing "its axe thing."

So that's what's rattling around in my head today.  Thanks for stopping by my blog.  Remember, whether you are the Tyrannosaurus Alpha Mompetitor, or you are the "Oil on Troubled Waters" type, I am glad you came by and shared some time with me.   And, don't forget, the tree long remembers what the axe soon forgets.

Dennis

"Clutter is the poetry of our homes..."

“Clutter is the poetry of our homes…”

A facebook friend recently posted this as her status update.  My inclusion of it as a blog entry here might lead to an interesting evening’s worth of dinner conversation in my home, because I am the clutterer and my wife is definitely the clutteree in our house, but that being said, I am nonetheless moved by this idea.

The entire quote is:

"Clutter is the poetry of our homes. It is an intimate view that life is not always perfect--a few dishes in the sink, books piled next to the bed. Everything in its place may give a certain satisfaction, but a lived-in room exudes comfort and warmth." -Mary Randolph Carter

Carter is an American journalist, executive and author. One of 9 children born to a family in Richmond, Virginia.  That fact alone, 9 children in one house, qualifies her as an expert in clutter, so I will take her word for it.

I love the turn of that phrase, “Clutter is the poetry of our homes…”  Looking around me, I see an abundance of what can only be classified as "poetry."

We have two kids in this house.  Two. And within arm’s reach of me at this exact moment are two wooden swords, an orange toy gun, and a play shotgun. The swords I actually bought because they were on sale and are cool as hell. They are nonetheless in “toy timeout” behind my desk because I am sure the TV is going to be the first victim of the cool swords.  The guns are in this house because a) I am not that bright and I actually brought them in, and b) when you give kids toy guns, they point toy guns at each other.  You may remember that I confessed to being a mushyheaded college liberal.  Well, this mushyheaded college liberal can’t bear the thought of the kids pointing toy guns at each other – so I confiscated them.  Hopefully my kids will consider this inconsistency as "Dad's poetry.”

Also, creating a clear and present danger to anyone walking around without shoes, is the epic-poem represented by an entire Polly Pockets village growing up behind me.  Kristin’s civilization-in-miniature, currently in development just over my left shoulder, warms our home courtesy of the generosity of her wonderful God-Mother, Aunt Christa.

Many nights I sit here, tinkering on the computer, only to realize that I am not doing a lick of work.  What I am really doing is listening to her give life to the richly layered relationships between the Polly Pockets village and her other dollhouse – the Pocket’s neighboring dollhouse to the east.

And I look over to the kitchen table and there sits the stack of school projects, bills to be paid, coupons I am saving, and toys that are being deported back downstairs to the children’s real play area. All of it is clutter. 

I was contemplating this notion of clutter just this morning as I stood in the front hallway looking for a cap.  On the banister going upstairs, there are four hooks that, at least for the month of December, will hold our Christmas stockings.  For the other 11 months of the year, they aren’t really good for anything but they lend themselves to the purpose of being a depository for fencing equipment, Halloween costumes that can’t be wrinkled, mine and Michael’s 18 different ballcaps, coats, shirts that have been pressed, shirts that need to be pressed, or anything else we don’t want the two damn cats to eat.

I am surrounded by so much “Poetry” that all I need to complete my ensemble is a black beret, turtleneck and clove cigarette.

But I actually believe the clutter is poetry.  The four year old keeps a handful of acorns in her jacket pocket that she gathered at the cottage. They have been there for ten weeks now. The jacket may be washed but the acorns must be removed and returned to her coat as soon as it dries.  They are her treasure.  They are her poetry.  We are enriched by the mere hearing of her many whispered stanzas.

And then there is the ten year old, nothing about him whispers.  His poetry is loud and joyful; colorful and alive. Mostly his vibrant poetic works are his drawings.  There isn’t a scrap of paper in the house that isn’t adorned with some kind of artwork courtesy of him.  Fabulous tales sketched out in his idle moments give us a peak over the transom of his mind. A more beautiful view does not exist in any window of this home, of that much I am certain. The pile on the kitchen table is a solid mix of junk mail and artwork from the boy.  The junk mail, bills, and coupons are hardly "good" poetry to my wife, but like me, she sees Michael's drawing as the meter and rhyme of our lives together.  They are the indicia of the shared lives being led here.

All of it combined says to me, “A family herein abides…”  The bike on the front lawn, the Frisbee on the roof, the leaves and acorns gathered from Kristin’s many walks around the neighborhood – what would we do without them, how much would we miss them if they were gone?  In terms of "poetry," my workbench in the garage is the tale of Gilgamesh and Hesiod's "Works and Days" all rolled into one.  Taken as a whole, the garage is really a group effort at poetry.  It's like Bacon and Shakespeare and Milton all teamed up to write something really amazing.  But I am grateful for the poetry of our clutter.

Grateful for the many badges that a family lives here.  Just grateful, I suppose.

None of this asserts to the occasional passer-by that, should they ever walk within ear-shot of my home, they won't hear me ranting on about some bad bad really bad work of poetry brought forward by the children.  They are capable of poetic outputs that exponentially outpace any mortal human's efforts to catalog them.  But still, there remains the underlying gratitude - the desire to give thanks for the mere fact there is a mess to clean up, toys to step on, that there lives with us two small, warm hearts without many cares in the world but for the Lego castle; the Polly Pocket tea party, or the small but growing armory behind Dad's desk.

So thanks for stopping by today.  I hope wherever you sit, you can see the clutter in your life as a badge of vitality and a life in action - symbolic of young hands and minds at work doing the best of what young hands and minds can do; dreaming, imagining, and creating.

Dennis