After recent posts I’m sure my parents are feeling like I think they never did anything right. This couldn’t be further from the truth. They did all kinds of things right – and well – and I’m hoping to pass these down to Eli, among others. (P.S. I had already outlined this post before I botched things up blogging this week, so these aren’t just platitudes.)
Love reading.
There are books in every room of the house and even in some of the closets. Seriously. My dad read books aloud to us as a family – The Chronicles of Narnia, Innocents Abroad, and the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy PLUS The Hobbit. That’s not the whole list, of course. It also includes things like Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and The Baby Beebee Bird that I’m pretty sure both of my parents can still say from memory. Now my mom gives copies of the same book to the family every Christmas so that we can read it and discuss later. They made sure that my sister and I read to ourselves all the time growing up. Of course, she and I also got in trouble all the time for reading too much and for reading instead of taking a bath and for reading while walking across the street and for reading instead of looking out the window or going outside. (For that last one, we would just go outside, and then read there.) Now Brynna and I are all grown up and we nearly always have overdue library books because we just read so much, all the time. Eli already loves reading books; I hope it continues.
Love learning.
My dad has five – nearly six – degrees and my mom finished her bachelor’s in three years. All from Rice (read: HARD). My sister is getting her doctorate at the moment, while I’m barely keeping up with my one bachelor’s that I got in four years from Wheaton (read: hard-ish). I dreamed last night that I was on year seven of trying to get my B.A. all because I kept forgetting to go to class, because I was reading for fun. But more than schooling, we love learning. My parents have an incredibly wide variety of interests from percussion techniques to unsolved theorems, from funny Youtube videos to obscure historical details about family members, from sports to horses to science: they love learning about everything. And so do my sister and I.
Love history.
It’s a running joke in our family that my parents have taken us to see every possible site even remotely related to the Wright Brothers. Birthplaces, first flight, probably the first school they went to: we’ve done it all. We have seen a whole bunch of battlefields and museums and old churches and famous houses and historical reenactments. We’ve even done U-turns to come back to a historical marker, get out of the car, and read it aloud. Seriously. But as much as we laugh about this, it is interesting. I only ever found history boring when I had a bad teacher because I had seen and heard and read about history in real life, and it was fascinating. Ryan’s family loves history too – he’s been to every plantation house in the South – so poor Eli is doomed to crossing his fingers and hoping we didn’t see that historical marker on that rundown building we just drove by.
Love music.
My parents sat through hours and hours and weeks and years of my sister and I practicing the piano (and for my sister, trumpet as well). Can you imagine what that is like? Hearing Hot Cross Buns fifty times in a row incorrectly? That is commitment, friends, and not just on the part of the kid doing the playing. Behind every pianist is a parent who stood in the next room shuddering and then kindly saying, “I think you need to try that part again.” But my mom and dad love music and my sister and I knew it was important. We went to all kinds of concerts and listened to lots of different kinds of music. We sang in choirs, in church, in the car, and in the shower. When my parents went out of town, my sister and I spent a good portion of our prized alone time in the house having listening parties of various vinyl records. She and I still have listening parties from time to time. Eli’s already demonstrated his impeccable musical taste (except his inexplicable love for the jingle from a Clorox commercial) so I think we’ll be golden here.
Love food.
Here’s the thing. I am a picky eater, but what I love, I really, really love. Ryan makes fun of me for buying anything with passion fruit as an ingredient but I totally do it anyhow. And I like my cheeseburgers plain but now I’ll put barbecue sauce on them. Growing up my parents said I had to try three bites of everything. And those three bites were sometimes miserable. Bell peppers! Oh, the horror! But from that I did learn to try food. Even as an adult I’m still trying food. It’s pretty frequent that I still don’t like it – avocados, I’m looking at you – but I will try. Sometimes I do like it (Italian dressing?! Delicious! Why have I been eating salad dry for so long? That is BORING). So far in his life, Eli has to be convinced to stop eating, so I think this won’t be a problem; but I’m glad my parents pushed me to try things I didn’t like.
Love travel.
My parents have a very broad definition of the term “driving distance.” Every year, we drove to Atlanta for Christmas from wherever we were living, whether it was from Texas or Indiana. That is not a short drive. But my sister and I would get in the van, have all the suitcases and presents packed around us, and we’d head off on a road trip. We listened to books on tape, Adventures in Odyssey, A Prairie Home Companion, G.T. and the Halo Express… all kinds of good stuff. And of course there was time for us to read as well. Even now, as much as other drivers anger me sometimes, I love driving and think road trips are awesome. I also think international travel is awesome after our vacations to Kenya, the U.K., Greece, and Rome. I am so grateful for those trips because seeing a lion, Stonehenge, the Acropolis, and Vatican City up close are truly different from seeing them in pictures. And I can’t wait until Eli gets to experience things like this too.
Love movies.
Every Saturday night, my mom and dad ordered pizza and we watched a movie. We watched Hitchcock films, The Princess Bride, Singing in the Rain, Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Where Eagles Dare, and many other greats. Sometimes we even stayed awake all the way through Plan 9 From Outer Space. It was so much fun, even after – and perhaps especially after – the thousandth viewing of The Princess Bride. Anybody want a peanut?
Love games.
We played a lot of games growing up, and still do whenever I go home. Brynna and I played a lot of Not So Scary Things, Candy Land, Monopoly, Authors, Battleship, Mille Bornes, Clue and even Mall Madness. Our version of Mall Madness had both an attitude and a speech impediment, so it said things like, “Ew! Long line! TRY AGAIN LATER!” and “Go to the… CHICHEN STORE.” (It meant kitchen store.) We played Life all the time too and I routinely rigged the rules so I’d win. Come to think of it, I did that with Clue and Candy Land too. I bet you didn’t know that it’s possible to cheat at Candy Land. It is. What it wasn’t possible to cheat at in our house was Trivial Pursuit. My dad won every time, usually without anyone else getting more than one pie piece. So now we don’t play Trivial Pursuit anymore. These days we usually play Nertz and Brynna always wins. Somehow we haven’t stopped playing that one though.
Love science.
Many of our home movies have been destroyed by keeping hydrochloric acid in the cabinet where they were stored. Yes, we did have hydrochloric acid in our house. My dad home-schooled high school chemistry with me one summer because it wouldn’t fit into my schedule. We used that HCl to mix with silver nitrate and produce silver chloride. We had our own little silver mine right there on the counter top. We did lots of science experiments that summer, and most of the rest of our lives too. My mom’s dad was an engineer so we had all kinds of fun building things and jury-rigging others. They weren’t pretty but they worked really well. I don’t know that we’ll keep high concentrations of acids around our house on a regular basis but Eli will definitely be subjected to science experiments. Doing them, I mean – I promise we aren’t planning to use him as a guinea pig.
Love storytelling.
We tell stories in our family, if you haven’t noticed. My dad told us stories about the dogs he had growing up, and the birds and fish that his dad raised. My mom told us her family legends about the antique lamp in our living room with Tiffany’s fingerprint in the glass! and our family gold from the sultan that went down with the Titanic, both of which are totally not true. Both of my parents value a good story, as is evidenced by previous mentions of reading a lot and listening to A Prairie Home Companion, among other things. Between them and growing up in the midst of a bunch of Filipinos, both my sister and I now talk in stories as a general rule. Eli doesn’t stand a chance.
Love writing.
Both of my parents are great writers. They write actual letters and send them in the mail, even. My mom journaled a lot when we were growing up, as did I. These are both fine with me and in fact are good! The one I didn’t enjoy – and plan on doing to Eli, poor kid – was that they had me rewrite essays way more times than I wanted to or were required to for school. Sometimes I had to rewrite an essay for them after it had already been graded by the teacher. This was THE WORST. And it turned me into a good writer. I learned how to write well because I was taught to write by people who could write well: most of the time my teachers were far inferior writers than my parents.
Love faith.
My parents put God first. End of discussion. I didn’t always agree with their decisions but I never doubted that they were trying to follow God. Their faith was genuine and they came by it honestly, not naively or blindly. I still believe all of this, too. I pray that Eli sees the legacy of faith that he has – on both sides of his family – and also comes to believe for himself honestly and sincerely.
Love others.
Growing up, we often had teenagers or college kids eating meals with us, or living with us. My parents were nearly always helping someone with something – housework, running errands, loaning out our vehicles, etc. I learned very early on that if someone has a need, then we do something about it. We showed love in practical ways that mattered, not just by telling people we cared.
Love self.
I often felt unlovable, particularly as a teenager. I just couldn’t figure myself out to save my life. But I knew that my parents loved me. I fought them tooth and nail about all kinds of things and I knew we all exasperated each other a lot of the time. But I knew that I was loved. It didn’t make sense but it was true nonetheless. And while I do hope that Eli doesn’t struggle as much as I did, or make his life as difficult as I made mine, I also hope that he always knows he is loved with as much certainty as I did.
Love laughing.
Laughter is important. And in my family, we laugh enough that I try not to be too hydrated when I’m there because I don’t have the, um, control that I used to. (Thanks a lot, Eli.) My parents laugh with us all the time and only laugh at us on occasion, when we deserve it. Eli makes them laugh, because he’s a funny kid. And Eli laughs with them too: great, belly-shaking giggles and guffaws. I know that whatever happens along the way, we’ll all still be laughing about it afterwards. I can’t wait to hear what Eli’s laugh sounds like once he gets it down pat.