Kids
After teaching two college classes, having dinner with a 13 year old, and spending the weekend with my 28 year old daughter, I am so grateful for kids.
Conclusion first: I have to love my children no matter what they do. That’s my duty as their father. Luckily for me, it’s never been hard. It can be hard for children to love their parents because grown children are never themselves with their parents — they are children first and adults second. There are too many expectations, too much buried memory and uncontrollable feelings, too much mutual responsibility between parents and children for those relationships to be easy and natural. But they can be fun. I have more fun with my kids than with anyone else. I hope they have some fun, too.
On paper, my wife Anna and I were a terrible match. When we became engaged, I was eight years younger (still am!), unemployed (fixed), and a recovering addict (still). I’m also a Catholic from New Jersey while Anna is Episcopalian and a native Nashvillian, differences that mean nothing to anyone who isn’t Catholic, Episcopalian, or born in the south. When Anna agreed to marry me, her family gave me handshakes and congratulations. Anna’s father took her to lunch for a talk. Our engagement was a big deal, and not in a good way.
When I told my father Anna and I were getting married he said, “Let me tell your mother.” I don’t know what he told her, but he must have done a great job because she never expressed any anxiety except to say I was tying myself down in my early twenties, which had been a time of fun and adventure for her. My twenties had not been like that for me. Other than Anna, much of my twenties was pretty unpleasant.
Later, after my mother-in-law and I became great friends, I asked her about those days before Anna and I were married. “Your father seemed confident with the match, and he’s an accomplished man, so I took comfort from that,” she said. I asked my father why he supported us. “Do you know what a covenant is?” he asked. “A covenant is a contract you have to fulfill no matter what the other party does. In an ordinary contract, if one side abandons the deal the other side can walk away as well. As your father, I have a covenant with you. I have to love you no matter what you do.”
I feel that way about my kids. Loving them isn’t so much my responsibility as my honor. My children are the most interesting people I know, and their friends are almost as interesting as they are.
Our youngest child Ted — now 24 — texts us pictures from art museums in Barcelona. I call our middle child Joe — 26 — for analysis of politics and sports. Anything interesting I have to say about either comes from him. Our oldest Mary Frances — 28 — is my tutor for tolerance, social justice, and building community. She’s too considerate to share her troubles, which puts a burden on her and on us, her parents.
Mary Frances wants to have an answer before she shares a problem. Some of that instinct comes from kindness, but some likely comes from a desire to avoid our unsolicited advice served with a side of shame. All I ever wanted to hear from my parents is, “I love you so much, and I’m so proud of you.” If I told my parents I attacked a Capital policeman to access a Congressman’s office during the January 6th insurrection, I’d still want to hear that. That and, “Do you know any good lawyers?” I suspect that’s all my children want to her from me.
Unsolicited Advice, or How I Spent My Time at Auburn
Last week I was a guest lecturer to two classes at Auburn’s business school. I can’t help being a showoff when I talk to kids, whether it’s my kids, their friends, or random members of their generation. I was supposed to lecture about product management and how the role relates to sales and entrepreneurship, but I ended up saying how you can hit the reset button on any decision, even marriage, and that the only event we can’t recover from is suicide. When one of the students made a face like, “I can’t believe he said that about marriage!” I dug the hole deeper by saying sometimes people stay together for the kids when the kids would be better off living in a home with less tension. I stole that idea from my son Ted, and I agree with him.
If the Auburn students got something out of my lectures, it will be something I don’t remember saying. That’s like most of parenting.
“Did I really say that? God, I can’t believe I said that.”
“Yes, Dad. You said it, and it helped.”
Fathers and Sons, Lying and Trump, and Random Montaigne Quotes
Relationships between fathers and their children are more fun for the fathers than for the children. I know from experience that children can’t be themselves with their parents. I edit myself when I’m with my parents, and I’ve done it my whole life. Childhood, both what we remember and the years before we can remember anything, is so formative it’s a simple matter to argue no one has free will. Everything we do is an involuntary reaction to imprinting created by our early environment, with our parents being the most powerful force in that environment.
I don’t subscribe to that argument. Parents are overrated. We parents can work hard to wreck our children with abuse and indifference, yet many children still escape and live happy, productive lives. Money may be more important than parents when it comes to overcoming any defects in the environments of our early home life. If you have money, you’ll be fine, even if your parents are terrible. Look at Donald Trump! I’ll bet his dad hit him, and he became President.
“In truth lying is an accursed vice. We are men, and hold together, only by our word. If we recognized the horror and the gravity of lying, we would persecute it with fire more justly than other crimes. I find that people ordinarily fool around chastising harmless faults in children very inappropriately, and torment them for thoughtless actions that leave neither imprint nor consequences. Only lying, and a little below it obstinacy, seem to me to be the actions whose birth and progress one should combat insistently. They grow with the child.” — Montaigne
There is no nourishing community that’s built on lies, whether it’s a family or a nation. Our son Ted recently told me his generation is more interested in community than self discovery. “There is no authentic self to find. We just want to find where we belong.” Wise words. I think I’ll steal them.
I belong as a husband and a father. I belong as a dog translator too, but I’m not sure I’ll ever live with another dog. Too much hassle and heartbreak, the same reasons people don’t have kids. Plus, I’m out of the habit.
“The man very well understood the power of habit who first invented this story: A village woman, having learned to pet and carry in her arms a calf from the hour of its birth, and continuing always to do so, gained this by habit, that even when he was a great ox she still could carry him.” — Montaigne
That’s a story about habits, and raising animals, and raising children. Things begin when the child or the animal is small and simple with needs we can easily fulfill. Carrying them makes us stronger until we’re so strong we can carry an ox. I could adopt another dog, but I don’t want one right now, just like I don’t want any more children. I want to grow in strength in different ways now.
The Rewards of Writing Books and Raising Kids
Last Friday Anna and I hosted ten people we don’t know well from our church for an Eastertide dinner. One family brought dessert and their two sons, Ian and David. David is 13 and an avid reader. I gave him a copy of A Dog’s Book of Wisdom to read while we ate the dessert. I sat directly across from him while I ate my pecan pie and he read. I watched him read, smile, laugh soundlessly and study the pictures. For twenty minutes there was nothing either of us would rather be doing; he reading, or me watching him read. It was the most rewarding experience in my life as a writer, and I had nothing to do with it. His enjoyment wasn’t for me; it was for my book. My book and its reader David created something holy and beautiful together, and I got to watch. It was a bit like raising kids. My kids are creating something beautiful with their lives, and I get to watch.
Achieving lasting happiness and productivity is never easy, even when we’re born wealthy, with loving parents who are gifted child raisers. No one can give us happiness. We have to make our own happiness. So maybe when our children ask what we want from them, we shouldn’t answer “I just want you to be happy.” Let’s give them an easier goal like, “I just want you to make $200,000 a year.”
“Oh, that’s all? $200,000 a year, even with a giant hole inside me, still counts as success? Why didn’t you say so?”
Book Signings!
Speaking of money and success, I have two book signings coming up. One is at Wild Birds Unlimited in Hendersonville, Tennessee, this Saturday April 20 to celebrate the fifth birthday of their sanctified shop dog Asher. The other one is Thursday April 25 at Shop Alice in Nashville. A part of the proceeds will benefit the animal rescue Proverbs 12:10. Click on the link to see our super cool invite!
“Just as in agriculture the operations that come before the planting, as well as the planting itself, are certain and easy; but as soon as the plant comes to life, there are various methods and great difficulties in raising it; so it is with men: little industry is needed to plant them, but it is quite a different burden we assume from the moment of their birth, a burden full of care and fear—that of training them and bringing them up.” — Montaigne
“For some dogs, having puppies is a joy. I find not having them is a joy, too.” — Margaret the Pug