Fatherly Advice

Paul here.

Sometimes I look at my children and I suddenly see them as adults.  It's an imperfect vision: adult G is still obsessed with aminals* in my imagination, and I have trouble picturing adult M with much hair.  But the degree to which both have grown and changed already sometimes strikes me and I think about how they're actual people who will grow up into actual grown ups and face ... the world. I don't have life figured out; not by a long shot.  And I don't know what it's like to be a girl, let alone a girl in the 21st century.  But there are things I hope my daughters can learn from me, beyond how to hold a spoon and which shoe goes on which foot. Advice is both a form of nostalgia, and a form of narcissism, but here I go anyway.  In no particular order, in what might become a recurring feature here but might not:

A Father's Advice to his Daughters:

1. Don't let anyone else tell you who you are allowed to be.  Not even me.  But don't buy into the idea of being true to yourself either.  There isn't a true self buried deep at your core.  You are made by your experiences, your community, your choices, your tastes. The best thing about this is that it never ends and you can decide what kind of person you want to be. Your everyday choices can slowly make you into that person. When I say "don't let anyone else tell you who you are allowed to be" I mean don't let anyone else decide for you who you want to turn yourself into.

2. A sister is a friend for life. Your grammy had (and probably still has) a cross-stitch with that on it in her house when I was growing up. It isn't limited to sisters.  The same idea goes for cousins, parents, aunts, uncles; it's true about brothers, but you don't have any. But I especially want to focus on sisters: on your relationship with each other. A sister is a friend for life doesn't mean that you will always like each other or that you don't have to be good to each other. It means that your family is with you forever.  If you make your sister into your friend, you will always have a friend.  And it means that even if you make your sister into a stranger or into an enemy you don't have to lose her forever.

3. Don't overwater your plants. You're more likely to drown them then to dry them out.  Don't stress out too much over them either. Plants want to live. Just let them. It took me so very long to figure this out.

4. Read. This advice shouldn't be surprising coming from me, but I really can't overstate it. Read history and read science, read the news and read theology, read the Bible, read comic books, read challenging modernist fiction and pulpy adventure stories. Many things you read will make you a happier person, and everything you read will make you a bigger person. Read.

5. You are not in charge of anyone else's feelings. Be kind and courteous, be loving and gracious; but do those things for your own sake.  Know that you can't make someone else happy, you can't make someone else better, and you can't make someone else love you.  Don't be kind to people so that they will be happy, be kind to them so that you will be. Love the people around you because love makes you better. But don't worry too much about what other people are feeling. That is up to them, in the end.

And finally: This isn't advice, but you have parents who despite their inevitable screw-ups, love you both so very very much. I hope you always know that.



*=not a typo, that's how she pronounces it

The Messiah

It is nearly Christmas.

We were on our way to a party, and we needed to pick up goat cheese.  The idea of the party was that everyone would bring pizza toppings, and we were bringing the ingredients to make a goat cheese, fig, and caramelized onion pizza (which is, incidentally, amazing).  So with the kids in the back seat and snow falling heavily, we drove to the grocery store.  I parked, while Jan ran in to buy the goat cheese.

I was listening to CBC Radio 2.  They were broadcasting a concert from Copenhagen, the idea of which was to celebrate and promote world peace by incorporating Arabic and Jewish music into traditional Christmas music.  They had an amazingly beautiful version of a number of pieces from Handel's Messiah, re-orchestrated with Arabic drums.

There's something about the beginning of the Messiah.  The text is from Isaiah 40.

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.
Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath received of the LORD's hand double for all her sins.

I will admit that even when I was studying the Bible in university at CMU, I  got choked-up in when we were studying Isaiah, and we got to chapter 40.  I'm not sure I can fully explain why.  The beauty of Handel's music only adds to the emotion, and in this performance the tenor (who was excellent) kept breaking away from Handel into Arabic music, which added a plaintive mystery and beauty to the already beautiful recitative and aria.

So I told G, "This music, that we're listening to, is very beautiful."

She listened quietly for a moment, then asked me "Is the man who is singing sad?"

"No, he's not sad.  He's singing to God's people that they don't have to be sad anymore.  He's saying: 'It's okay, you don't have to cry'"

"Why is he saying 'it's okay'?"

"Because ... God's people don't always do what God tells them to do.  And when God's people do bad things, sometimes God punishes them.  But here God is saying that their punishment is over.  God is saying that they don't need to be sad, that they don't need to be punished.  God is saying 'I forgive you'".

She thought about that for a moment.

"Like how when I do something bad you forgive me?"

I was feeling emotional already, and at this point I could barely keep it together enough to say, "Yes.  Exactly like that."

It is an amazing thing to watch a child learn, to watch a baby learn to sit, and crawl, and stand, and talk; to watch a toddler learn to express her ideas, and show off her memory, and exercise her imagination; to watch a child discover the world, and God too.  And it's humbling to think that I am responsible (partly) for teaching her.  Human fathers fail to be a fitting mirror for our heavenly father.  But what I want to do is be the kind of father who can be an image to my daughters of God's love.  And I know I will fail, but I want to try.  To hear my daughter describe me that way, even for a moment,--to hear her think: "What is my daddy like?  What does he do?  He forgives me." is almost unbearably moving.  It is exactly the kind of father I always hoped to be.  It also makes me think of God so differently to think that God's love for me is like my love for my daughters.  It was an insight, on an emotional level, to realize that God forgives Israel--that God forgives me--just like I forgive G: easily and endlessly.

I said, "I love you, G", and we listened to the concert, until Jan came back with the goat cheese.

"Tell it Backwards"

Like most three year olds, G loves stories.  If she had her way someone would be either reading her a book or making up a story for her at all times.

And, again like most three year olds, she likes to hear her favourite books over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

But when even she starts to get tired of the repetition, she asks of a little variation on the familiar.  Lately she has a new request.  "Read it backwards." 

When you read "The Little Red Hen" normally it's a story about a hen who finds a grain of wheat and makes it into bread without anybody's help, and then eats the bread also with nobody's help.

But when you read it backwards it's the story of a hen who wakes up and invites all her friends to eat bread for breakfast with her.  They say no thank you, but she likes the bread so much she decides to make another loaf.  Then she sells some flour to the mill in exchange for some grain, and offers the grain to her friends.  They say no thank you again so she ends her day by doing some gardening.

Normally "The Little Engine that Could" is the story of a broken down train that is eventually rescued by a little blue engine who takes them over the mountain.

But when you read it backwards it's the story of a blue engine who abandons her train after bringing it over the mountain.  No other engines will help, until the dolls and toys fix a broken down engine which takes them back home.

And when you read "The Cat in the Hat" backwards it is exactly the same.

Half Days on Wednesday

I am lucky enough that I have the freedom to decide my own schedule. I’m a grad student, which despite how it may sound, IS a job. I get paid (not much, but some). I have work to do. If I don’t do the work, I don’t get the pay. But (right now anyway) the work is almost entirely product-based, which means nobody cares if I do it from 9-5 on Monday to Friday, or if I do it all in a 30 hour spurt on the weekend. As long as it gets done. So my schedule is flexible.

But since I want to finish my degree quickly I pretty much think of myself as having a 9-5 job. I go to my office (or study room) every morning, and come home at around 5 every day. I try to put my studying away when I get home so that I am really home and present for my family when I am home, not distracted.

My big exception to this is on Wednesdays, when I take a half-day and let Jan go off on her own. Sometimes she goes out in the morning, and sometimes in the afternoon. It doesn’t matter. I look forward to Wednesdays. Although I really love my work, Wednesdays are great for a lot of reasons.

Firstly, it makes me feel like a good husband, which is always nice. I love how happy Jan is after she’s had a chance to spend a few hours drinking coffee at Starbucks, or browsing at a used book store, or even just grocery shopping without two kids. She gets to have some time to herself–some time OUT to herself, and I like being able to give her that.

I also love being able to spend time with my kids and no one else. When G was a baby, Jan and I each worked part-time, and I got a lot of time with her by myself. I really believe it helped me be a better father, because I didn’t have anyone else to rely on or to pass the buck to. It was all on me. It was sink or swim. And that gave me a confidence, and a competence, but also a closeness to my daughter that I think would have come more slowly otherwise. I don’t get that as much with M, and I miss it. But on Wednesdays I get that. It forces me to build my parenting skills–to learn how to deal with two kids at once and no help–but it is also a chance to spend some undistracted time with my kids.

I know many dads don’t have the same flexibility I have, and aren’t able to just take a half day once a week. But I really can’t overstate how nice it is to spend time parenting without a net.

Why I Like Waking up at 4am -- a Post by Paul

I know I'm not supposed to, but I really like walking around my apartment with my baby at 4am, pacing and singing her to sleep.

Of course, I don't like having my sleep interrupted.  I don't like to hear my baby crying, and I don't like it when M wakes up in the middle of the night--not exactly.  And I don't like it when my singing and pacing doesn't work.  But usually it does.  And when it does, it makes me feel like a good father, which is a really great feeling.  When M is crying, and I pick her up and she stops, I love that feeling.  And when I rock her and sing to her, and put her back to sleep, and she stays asleep, I'm a happy man.

I really like getting up with her while Jan stays in bed.  Mothers have a built-in mechanism for bonding with their children.  Especially while she is breastfeeding, Jan has a virtually foolproof way of calming M.  But we're trying to convince M to sleep through the night again and a big part of that is breaking the expectation of milk at 4am. Like her big sister, M was an amazing sleeper for her first 6 months or so.  But just around the 6 month mark--just before in M's case, just after in G's--she started to wake up in the middle of the night.  With G we just assumed it was a fluke and Jan fed her, until before we noticed it had become a habit for G to eat 3 or 4 times a night.  With M we're determined not to make that mistake.  She's not hungry.  She just wants comfort.  But M won't calm down in Jan's arms unless Jan feeds her--not in the middle of the night anyway, not when she wants milk.  But she'll calm down in my arms.  So for fifteen minutes, or half an hour, I hold my baby all alone, in a quiet apartment.  Everyone else is sleeping and it's just her and me.  And I rock her and sing to her, and she nuzzles in and falls back asleep, because my voice is as soothing as mother's milk.


So yes, I like getting up with my baby and walking around the apartment with her at 4am, singing her to sleep.


Just as long as it doesn't last for too long.

Don't Call My Daughter "Princess"

Note: This is part one of a two part series on raising girls. Part one is by Paul, part two will be by me.

If you aren't a parent -- and especially if you're not the parent of a daughter -- you might not be aware of the whole "princess" thing.  But trust me.  It's a thing.  Before I even get into whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, it's a thing.

G gets called "princess" several times a day by strangers, and when she's wearing a dress (especially a fancy dress) she gets called "princess" repeatedly by almost everyone who sees her.  Grocery store clerks say "oh are you a princess?"  People on the street say "What a little princess!"

So what's wrong with that?  Girls go through a princess phase.  What's the big deal?

A couple of things.  Firstly, for G, the princess phase hasn't started yet.  And this princess bombardment will keep going long past the natural life cycle of any phase.  It's not "just a phase", it's a cultural prescription.  When girls get told from the time they are born that they are princesses, that's not just a phase.  Culture tells my daughters that they are (should be) princesses. Books, toys, movies and especially Disney bombard girls with princesses.  And what assumptions are built into that label?

Princesses have no power*. They aren't queens, don't have any power except the power to marry a prince.  They are objects not subjects.  They don't do anything, they are done to.  More, the cultural image of a princess is a pretty princess, so my daughters get told all the time that their only value lies in their appearance.

Secondly, princesses aren't just an abstract cultural idea, they're a cultural commodity.  It's about stuff, mostly stuff sold by Disney.  Disney markets the "disney princess" brand so strongly and so successfully that it's hard to get away from.  And as marketing it's very successful.  But I don't want my daughters to be consumers.  I actually think unchecked consumerism is a bad thing, and I want to teach my daughters to resist it.

Finally, it's boring.  G is full of imagination.  One minute she's a tiger then next she's a cowboy then she's Mommy then she's Daddy then she's Superman then she's a singer then she's a dancer then she's a frog then she's a cook.  And when she's wearing a fancy dress, she could be a fairy or a ballet dancer or an architect in a fancy dress.  And why can't a princess be part of that?  It can.  It is and it unavoidably will be.  But the princess idea is already taken care of by movies and books and strangers and pyjamas.  If everyone who has ever thought about it deliberately avoided calling G and M "princess" they probably would still get called "princess" every single day.  So seriously people  Just stop it.

*Jan's editorial note: Except She-Ra, Princess of Power. But she's from the 80's. 

Since it's Christmas let's be glad, even if your life's been bad

Every year, Jan and I travel at Christmas.  We alternate between spending Christmas with Jan's parents in Saskatoon and with my parents in Ontario.  This year we're going to Ontario.  We're leaving tomorrow, and we're looking forward to it.

I love my family, and it's very good to see them when I do.  But there's something a little bit unsatisfying about this travel arrangement.  It's not unsatisfying enough that we are likely to change anytime soon, but there it is.  When we're in somebody else's home--even our own parents--we are having their Christmas.  It makes it hard to make our own Christmas, our own traditions, stressing what we think are the most important parts and de-stressing other parts of the holiday.  Even though we are both pushing 30, and have two children of our own, Christmas in our parents house makes it hard to feel like grown-ups.  Also, Christmas time is so steeped in nostaligia and tradition that each of us becomes acutely aware of how our families are different from each other.  One simple example of this is in Christmas music.  Jan and I each grew up with music around Christmas time, and it's not the same music.  So when we each think "Christmas music", we're thinking of different things.

We've been making our own Christmas playlists for the past few years, and Sufjan Stevens' Christmas music is featured prominently.  Part of why I like Sufjan Stevens' Christmas music so much is that he hits a really good balance between joy and melancholy.  There's just a touch of sadness in his Christmas music, but not enough to overwhelm the fact that Christmas is a happy time.  It's a common thing for Christmas to be tinged with melancholy.  For some people it's mostly melancholic, and for others it's just the barest touch.  But Christmas naturally has a touch of melancholy to it.  Partly this is because to the degree that it's a secular holiday it's a bittersweet one.  Firstly because of the nostalgia; Christmas is a reminder of what we used to have and don't anymore.  We miss the sentimental (fictional) childhood Christmas of pure excitement, but we can't recreate it.  We try to make it for our own children, but it's not always obvious how.  Commercial Christmas is ultimately unsatisfying, because you can't actually buy your childhood back.  And non-commercial secular Christmas is almost worse.  We try to make some kind of transcendental meaning out of imminent things like family and friends.  But that just emphasizes what we have lost or are going to lose.  Friendships and families change, and attaching a deep transcendental meaning to family can really add melancholy to the season, because on some level you know that these people are not going to be with you forever--and because your family is never what it should be.

Even religious Christmas is tinged with melancholy.  It's not the outright, straightforwardly happy holiday that Easter is.  That's why the magi bring Jesus myrrh.  Myrrh is an embalming spice.  There is a hint of sadness, of loss, right in the Christmas story.  This child comes with tidings of great joy for all people, but he is also a child born to die.  T.S. Eliot grasps this in his poem "Journey of the Magi":

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

I can lose patience with the modernist tendency to make everything depressing--to act as though art isn't "real" unless it's forcing us to confront the sadness and brutality of our lives.  There's a lot of joy in real lives too.  I get annoyed when friends dismiss some styles of church worship as "happy-clappy", because though it's true that the Psalms show the whole range of human emotion, "bittersweet" isn't a range either, and we can sometimes rush through Joy to get back to modernist bittersweet melancholy.  But Christmas seems to me to be naturally bittersweet.  It's an emotionally complicated time, both as a secular holiday and as a religious Holy Day.

I think that part of what we need to do with Christmas is accept the bittersweet for what it is, like Sufjan Stevens does.

So this Christmas I'll be very glad to see my parents, and my brother J and his family, and my sister C and her family, but I'll be sad to miss my sister J and her family.  I'll eat lots of yummy treats, but I'll probably feel a little sick.  I'll enjoy the time off, but I'll probably feel a little stir-crazy.  We'll go to church on Christmas Eve, but not our home church.  We'll give and get presents, and we'll be glad.  We'll experience the nativity but not the second coming.  We'll celebrate the end of Advent, but we'll know that Lent is still coming.  And knowing all of that, maybe we'll be able to rejoice in Christmas more fully.

God bless us, everyone.
Merry Christmas.

Stay at Home (posts by paul)

For a long time before we moved to Newfoundland I was G's primary caregiver.  Ever since her maternity leave ended, Jan had to be at work regularly, and I was the one who was home the most. When I wasn't actually in class I was often home with her.  Now Jan is back on maternity leave as we are waiting for Baby 2: Electric Boogaloo to be born, and I'm struggling with the heavy workload of three Phd classes.  So I'm going to the school every day--whether I have classes or not--to work.

And although I've only been doing this for about a month, I'm finding it surprisingly difficult to go to work every day and leave my daughter.  It's hard to come home and ask Jan how G is doing, what she's been up to, what she did and learned to do, instead of seeing it all for myself.  I also find, surprisingly, that since I've stopped being the parent who spends the most time with G, I've also stopped being the more patient parent.  I used to secretly think that I was just a more patient person than Jan is, but now that I'm not spending all day with G anymore, it's harder to shift into a toddler's perspective--harder to be as patient with her as I would like to be.  I miss that.

With all of that said, there is something really wonderful about coming home every evening to enthusiastic shouts of "Daddy! Daddy's home! Daddy!  DADDY!".

St. John's Paul and Winnipeg Paul

Moving to St. John's is a pretty extreme change, and I'm hoping to use it as a motivation to change some things about myself -- a new context to establish new habits.

Winnipeg Paul bought pop and a snack from the convenience store at least once a week, maybe more.

St. John's Paul doesn't drink pop at all, and when he wants a snack, he chooses fruit.

Winnipeg Paul stayed up late every night and slept in every morning.

St. John's Paul is in bed by 11 every night and up by 7:30 every morning.

Winnipeg Paul watched tv when he was bored.

St. John's Paul doesn't even have a tv.  He bakes something or tidies the apartment when he finds himself needing something to do.

St. John's Paul goes for a run once a week, and he's slowly gearing up to more.  He makes the bed every morning and he doesn't go to bed if the dishes are still dirty.  St. John's Paul will always be on top of his readings, and will plan ahead so that when final papers are due he's not in a crisis.  He'll bring lunch to school instead of buying it.  St. John's Paul does evening devotionals with St. John's Jan every evening, and he won't let that peter out the way Winnipeg Paul would.

Maybe it's naive to think that moving to a new city can really make me a better person.  But that kind of negative thinking is exactly what Winnipeg Paul would say.

Also, St. John's Paul looks like this: 

Stuff

This move involves some serious downsizing.  Which is a surprisingly liberating experience.  I think it's fair to say that I have a complicated attitude toward stuff.  On one hand, I seriously covet stuff.  I want an iPad and a new computer, and a nicely decorated apartment, and beautiful copies of my books.  I want G to have all kinds of great toys, and I want to have kitchen stuff that is both beautiful and functional.  And much as I wish I didn't, a part of me really resents people who DO have all that stuff.

And that, really, is the problem.  I don't believe that having all the stuff I want would really make me happier, and even more, I don't believe that having it would make me better.  I don't believe having that stuff would make me a less resentful, more peaceful, more contented person.  But that is the person I want to be.  It's a cliche, but I think it's true -- stuff ends up owning you instead of the other way around, if you will let it.

So we're selling and giving away and throwing away a lot of our stuff, and I'm kind of happy about it. And when we get to St. John's, we're not going to replace most of it.  We're going to try to be minimalists, and buy only what we really need.  And of course, what we decide we "really need" will probably be a lot more than we ACTUALLY really need, but hopefully, it is a step in the right direction.

Party

This blog will mostly be by Jan, but this is Paul intruding to say:

We are having a party.  It was imagined as a massive-invite-everyone-we-know-in-Winnipeg-party, but it's shaping up to be more of an intimate affair.  Which is what we get for waiting until the week of to start inviting people.

Our apartment is getting emptier by the day, and by party time tonight we will have only one couch, one kitchen table and a few kitchen chairs left.  There's nothing on the walls, and what was once our living room is now empty save for boxes.  I'm hoping that is part of the theme of the party.  It's BYOS (bring your own seating).

I'd planned on baking a cake, but realized last night that we have no cake pans left.  So hopefully a friend will loan me hers.

The whole experience of planning this party is a little surreal.  It might be a little depressing to try to have a party in a mostly-empty apartment, especially if not many people turn up.  Which isn't any kind of insult to the lovely people who ARE coming -- it's not like they're not good enough.  But I was hoping for a sheer volume of people to make up for the lack of stuff in the place.