Posts Tagged ‘parenting’
Helping Family
When we got the message from Elysa that she could use some help with several home maintenance projects, Cyndie and I agreed to show up without hesitation. We packed up some tools and supplies and headed to the Cities.
I’m no carpenter but I have learned how to screw boards on a deck.
We decided to pull some boards off and flip them over as a temporary fix until a more permanent solution is figured out. The original screws were rusted almost to dust which made some easy to remove and others a real battle after the heads broke off.
While I finished putting in new screws to re-secure the boards, Cyndie helped with the removal of an unwanted bush.
Now you see it.
Now you don’t.
Next, I mounted new latch hardware on the back gate to the alley that will keep their dog from muscling his way out when the urge strikes.
Mission accomplished. Temporary fixes R us.
Somehow, I solved all the challenges of the various repairs without once resorting to using duct tape. Hopefully, the new screws hold.
It is an honor to be able to lend a hand when family is in need. Especially when I was just the beneficiary of help from Julian the day before, pounding down fence posts.
Doesn’t seem that long ago that I was shoulder to shoulder with them as little kids, looking out our master bedroom window in EP at a thunderstorm and striving to dispel anxieties over the flashing and booming. We made up a rating system to judge the impressiveness of the brilliant zig-zagging bolts and loudest booms of thunder.
Now we all face home-owner ‘adulting’ type problems. It’s nice to know we’ll never stop helping each other.
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My Experience
Moms and dads who are primary caretakers of kids who need to be clothed and fed, helped in the toilet, and supported and encouraged day and night do not get enough credit for the loss of their own personal time. Having sat down only to get right back up more times in the last two days than my old body is used to has revealed how much I prefer to stay in one place for as long as possible once I settle in for a rest.
My emergency room experience frequently involved feeling like I was in the way while slowly accumulating things to hold in my arms. I took the thick fleece jacket from Cyndie that was now overly enmeshed with fragmenting dried leaves after she had fallen and then tried using it to support her dangling right foot. It was dropping a trail of leaf shrapnel everywhere I went.
I was handed the dish towel she had tied up around the jacket to make a sling. I was handed the sock they cut off her foot. I was already shouldering Cyndie’s purse and handing her phone back and forth as she looked up info for the nurses. I was given Cyndie’s pants to add to the bundle.
Not long after, I was sent to the pharmacy to pick up her pain prescription before closing time. Cyndie asked me to buy a pair of loose pants to wear home from the hospital while I was there. Picture me trying to pick out pants for Cyndie to wear. Now stop laughing.
After the chaos of an emergency room, we got home to the challenge of getting her up the stairs into the “cabin” and settled into a lounging position. I was back and forth to the car several times. In my personal chaos, I set my wallet somewhere after returning Cyndie’s health card to her.
By bedtime, I knew I had no idea where that wallet was, except it had to be in the house somewhere because I knew the last time I used it.
Luckily, the routine at home is rather familiar for me, having taken care of Cyndie through multiple surgery recoveries. I still remember how to make coffee for her.
We need to survive the weekend. While driving home from the lake yesterday, Cyndie was on the phone with several treatment places, seeking immediate surgery, if possible. We had possession of her x-ray and the detailed analysis from the Hayward ER that Cyndie was providing to the people on the phone.
The description of her condition included the word, “comminuted.”
Comminuted: adjective
reduced to minute particles or fragments.
• Medicine (of a fracture) producing multiple bone splinters.
She was told she will need a trauma surgeon and none were immediately available Friday afternoon.
An appointment for assessment by a trauma surgeon is scheduled for Monday.
Moms and dads and people raising their grandchildren don’t get enough credit for their loss of personal time.
Luckily, love is the key that more than makes up for the loss. It’s a privilege to take care of our most beloved friends and family.
That’s my experience.
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Leaving Us
It’s Tuesday after Labor Day and plenty of fall activities that haven’t already kicked off will be starting today. Our guests left us yesterday for the next leg of their journey in a vehicle that looked to be packed with everything a college freshman would need to get started.
The Birgens awoke in the morning to the news that the Kenyan Supreme Court has ruled that the candidate, William Ruto, was properly elected President in the 2022 general election. One less thing to be concerned about for them at a time their oldest son is starting a new job and the youngest is starting college.
I find myself thinking about how nice it is to be well beyond the years of taking kids to their first year of college. Feels similar to when I began to appreciate getting past the years when September meant “back to school” during the K-12 phase of our kids’ lives.
The few connotations September holds for me now are the onset of fall colors, Cyndie’s and my anniversary (41 years!), Julian’s birthday, and the start of MN Vikings football –despite my best efforts to stop caring about anything having to do with the modern-day NFL. Nothing about getting prepared for school.
I have already noticed the return of school bus traffic on our road at home twice a day, but the impact from that on my life is negligible.
I tip my hat to all of you who have school-age children starting a new bus and/or classroom experience today.
My time with access to television coverage of the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament is ending today as we leave the lake place and return home.
For some reason –probably related to wanting to witness Serena Williams make one last attempt for a major victory at the end of her illustrious career– I was inspired to watch as many live matches as I could this year. I was lucky to have captured a few dramatic matchups that were really exciting and very competitive.
A couple of them were almost as exciting as the end of the Florida State vs. LSU college football game I stumbled upon Sunday night during a break in the tennis.
It’s probably a good thing we are leaving the lake place and all the cable sports channels I have access to here so I can take a break from spectator sports and get outside and give this gorgeous September weather the proper respect it deserves.
It’s my favorite time of year, right up there with my other favorite, winter!
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Scared Chicks
While Cyndie is away at the lake, I am filling in for her as “chick mom” when I get home from work each day. I think they had me figured out the first moment I stepped into the role. I can see it in their faces.
“You’re not doing it right!”
“Mom always cuts the crust off.”
“We don’t strip down to our underwear for naps.”
I’m definitely the dad in this relationship. They have a heat lamp and some water. They’ll be just fine.
While staring at them romping around like a bunch of 3-week-old chicks for a while the other night, I mindlessly belched a frog-voiced burp. I scared the daylights out of them!
Never saw twelve chicks move so fast all at once like that before.
In a blink, the scattered puff-balls instantly became one tiny pile of little heads squeezed into the smallest possible space at the other end of the brooder, frozen in a motionless defense move that looked like an attempt to appear invisible while maintaining absolute silence.
We both held our positions until I broke the spell by speaking to them in my best falsetto “dad-charming-chickens” voice to let them know it was just me and everyone was safe. As quick as they froze together, they went back to fluttering about as normal.
“Say ‘excuse me’ Dad.”
Excuse me.
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Temporary Ripple
There has been a stressful ripple in the fabric of normalcy for our family recently. Out of respect for the privacy of all involved, I am choosing to be purposely vague, but I would like to provide some context that was otherwise missing from my narrations of late.
There is good news in that, other than some residual post traumatic stress that will take time to process, everyone involved is okay, and everyone impacted is on a path of recovery from a powerful dose of hyper-concern.
Yesterday morning, with Cyndie home from Florida, our children gathered at our house for much-needed hugs and a large dose of comfort-food for a brunch.
Trauma has absolutely no respect for time and place, and it does a person no good to live in a state of constant alert for potential threats, so the sudden unexpected rise of calamity is, well… traumatizing. Compounded in this case because the incident grew out of a well-intentioned effort to offer support for a friend in need.
I guess this falls under the adage of no good deed going unpunished.
One thing that our recent experience has reminded me of is this: We can’t always know, in fact, usually don’t know, what people around us have lived through. That person next to you on the plane may have just been to the emergency room before boarding. Or a police station. Or both.
Last week, on my way to work, I approached a sudden slowing of traffic and soon discovered a crash had just occurred. As my mind processed the visual while rolling past, it struck me that the final location and resulting damage to the van indicated it likely rolled before landing back on its wheels. There were still people inside, looking to be in shock.
I was traumatized remotely. One of my first reactions, upon arriving at work, was to tell someone about what I had seen. Talking helps to process the intense emotions of trauma.
At the same time, telling strangers of our personal traumas is not a reasonable practice. Therefore, it stands to reason that we shouldn’t expect that others are freely telling us of theirs.
We can all hope that everyone around us is always having a safe and healthy day, but don’t take for granted the possibility that things might be otherwise. Someone you find yourself interacting with may be using precious effort to maintain a veneer of normal, despite riding an unspoken residual wave of some uninvited drama.
Hope for the best, but be prepared for the alternatives. Always give people space to have unseen reasons for the way they behave.
Sending love in advance to others around us is a pretty safe balm for what might ail a person.
Thank you to all who have offered your love and support to contain this temporary ripple for our family. It is helping to guide us all back to our preferred calm tranquility.
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Balding Wyandotte
I don’t really know what a normal day is for raising chickens. Pretty much just like all other normal days, I guess. There’s always something of interest readily available to the observant caretaker. I’ve noticed we aren’t getting very many eggs, now that the short days of winter are upon us.
Yesterday was extremely sunny and mild, as winter days go, and our chickens were soaking up the warmth under the barn overhang.
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Beyond the two Buff Orpingtons who seem to have a problem keeping their butts clean, the most notable anomaly we are witnessing is the balding of one Golden Laced Wyandotte. I zoomed in on a healthy looking hen on the left, below, for comparison to our featherless-headed chicken of interest on the right.
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If this is one of those teenage phases where she is trying a different hair style from the rest of the crowd, we get it. Beyond the one photo I’ve seen of a young Cyndie with a permed afro, and my early attempts to get my hair to grow long and straight against its natural tendency to curl, we also parented two children through experimentations with very creative, and far from subtle, color changes.
Our Wyandotte looks like one tough bird.
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In all seriousness, we don’t believe she picked this style by choice, so she is under observation for clues as to what is occurring with her.
There haven’t been any signs of targeted aggression from the rest of the group, and we haven’t noticed any other evidence of ill-health that might be contributing to the loss of head feathers, so the cause is undiagnosed at this point.
For now, we are standing by and relying on the universal cure-all of the passage of time with hope it will bring a return of normalcy for her.
It would be nice if it could happen soon. Winter officially arrives on Friday, and those feathers will come in handy when the next inevitable cold snap arrives for a visit.
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Brilliant Chickens
Our chicks are growing up almost as fast as the days of the week that fly by in a blink. Ever since that first day when Cyndie taught them how to find a drink of water in our brooder, they have piled on one new accomplishment after another. Sometimes it is a result of them copying each other, and sometimes it is through our gentle instruction.
In order to raise them to be comfortable with our presence and willing to have us handle them, we spent some extended time picking them up and whispering sweet nothings in their direction yesterday. Cyndie spent much of that visit searching for unique markings that will help identify individuals for naming purposes.
I think we should get to know their personalities better, so they can show us what names they deserve. My idea for using favorite chicken recipes was summarily denied, but I still may succeed in getting one of the yellow ones named Parmesan.
We think that the classical music we have on all night long for them is working well to feed their rapidly growing brains with intricacies and emotional depth. They have demonstrated such quick ability to grasp everything we introduce that we are confident we have the makings of brilliance in this flock.
It’s almost like they knew to perch on that stick I put in the brooder before I even finished setting it in place. Now I am working on finding just the right gnarly branches from our brush piles that I can use to carve little chess pieces. With 10 chicks, I’m debating with myself over the need for more than one board. They obviously learn well enough by observing each other, I think they can get the game down by watching a match played by their brood-mates.
Cyndie is busy creating flash cards with images of ticks, flies, and bugs, as well as piles of manure to be scratched apart in a “green means go” motif. The back sides will have a red theme and include threats like the hawks and eagles overhead, fox, raccoon, coyote, the neighbor’s dogs, and yes, even Delilah.
Our chickens are going to be brilliant.
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Teach or Do?
Have you noticed a trend? There is a commercial where automobiles being driven by teens are actually being carried by groups of parents to keep them safe. The groups of adults hold the car up in the air and lift it over another car to avoid a collision. In another shot, the adults are bringing a car to a stop at a railroad crossing. If I recall correctly, the ad is for an insurance company and they make reference to having cameras in the car so parents can see how their children are behaving as drivers on their own. How ‘on their own’ is that? The next thing you know, parents will ‘helicopter’ over kids that have left home to be in college. Of course, that is exactly what some parents are doing.
In a way, it seems logical to look at something tragic that happened and react with a plan to prevent the possibility for that tragedy to ever happen again. But I think it always runs a risk of punishment not fitting the crime. It is very sad that children die. I ask, is it logical that we should devise a way to live that will prevent any childhood death, or near-death and the resulting disabilities? I think it is an over-reaction. At what point do we actually become the problem we want to solve? We want our kids safe, but if we get so busy over-stepping our bounds to protect by doing for them, we rob them of the actual, valuable lessons that teach them to make responsible, intelligent decisions that lead to outcomes ultimately desired.
It makes sense to control the urge to over-protect our children and instead, teach them the lessons to discern the right course of action in unexpected situations. Instill confidence in their abilities to best face life’s risks. Risks not dissimilar to the ones that we successfully survived to ultimately become their parents.
Life is lived, it is not controlled.
Relative Something 