This morning I had the opportunity to learn an important lesson again: Always have a plan.
See how I did that? It’s a trick to rewire the brain for positivity, which is to say, “higher levels of effectiveness and opportunity.” Instead of saying, “I was a freaking idiot,” or, “Dummy,” turn it into a positive.
Thanks, #PersonalGrowthTwitter!
The situation was thus: the kids had their weekly homeschool co-op classes and I knew I’d have to drive at least some of them somewhere, and likely long before I was done writing.
“I’ll figure it out.”
I should have seen the chaos brewing, and sure enough, it came. Bumps in the night turned into dogs barking, kids retreating to our bed, and a thunderstorm rolling through. It zombified me. And just as we were wrapping up our emergency lunch shopping trip, I get a message from my wife saying that their co-op was canceled this week.
Because of course it was.
So, here I am starting a post at noon, which is typically when the Muse takes off for a taqueria in La Escondida.
It’s typical. The natural end of the family/productivity binary is a decayed orbit resulting in mutual annihilation. Or so all the evidence suggests. Nonetheless, I continue trying to craft a Pegasus from these mere bits of boring old reality.
Back in the early kid-producing years, I’d take one, then two, then eventually all four kids to the office so my wife could catch a break every now and then. When I first started doing that, I was all in. The kids brought schoolwork, books to read, paper to draw on. I’d monitor their schoolwork from my stand-up desk (where one is naturally poised for action and production). However, it took me a few years to realize that bringing kids to a warehouse stuffed with the detritus of a thousand moves was more like taking them to Knotts Berry Farm. And having cotton candy for lunch.
By the time I figured out that an environment filled with diesel trucks, ex- and pre-cons was NOT conducive to learning, I’d pretty much given up hope of saving the company. Hell, why not build giant rope swings from the rafters?
I thought I was being Super Dad. I’d been given this gift of my own business, of self-determination, of freedom from the System. And you better believe I was going to do something with it. I could make fat stacks of cash, raise amazing children, and make my wife happy.
I was wrong on all counts, although the kids are pretty amazing. However, at the time, all I was really teaching them was that Daddy is “too busy,” and that hasn’t changed all that much.
I’m still looking for the solution. I know that at least some men do it, but how many of them master all three elements? How many make enough money to support the family comfortably, have happy, whole, life-giving marriages, and have children that love, admire and want to remain near the parents as they build their own lives? I can’t think of many who can check all three of those boxes. I’m struggling to think of one.
For the Christian father, the mission, if not the strategy and tactics, is clear. I apologize for the long quote, but I came across this recently, and it lays out the duty of families pretty well. Maybe it’s just me, but I think it implies a special mission for the men who are, at least theoretically, supposed to be the head of the family.
“A marriage which does not constantly crucify its own selfishness and self-sufficiency, which does not ‘die to itself’ that it may point beyond itself, is not a Christian marriage. The real sin of marriage today is not adultery or lack of ‘adjustment’ or ‘mental cruelty.’ It is the idolization of the family itself, the refusal to understand marriage as directed toward the Kingdom of God. This is expressed in the sentiment that one would ‘do anything’ for his family, even steal. The family has here ceased to be for the glory of God; it has ceased to be a sacramental entrance into his presence. It is not the lack of respect for the family, it is the idolization of the family that breaks the modern family so easily, making divorce its almost natural shadow. It is the identification of marriage with happiness and the refusal to accept the cross in it. In a Christian marriage, in fact, three are married; and the united loyalty of the two toward the third, who is God, keeps the two in an active unity with each other as well as with God. Yet it is the presence of God which is the death of the marriage as something only ‘natural.’ It is the cross of Christ that brings the self-sufficiency of nature to its end. But ‘by the cross, joy entered the whole world.’ Its presence is thus the real joy of marriage. It is the joyful certitude that the marriage vow, in the perspective of the eternal Kingdom, is not taken ‘until death parts,’ but until death unites us completely.”
— Fr Schmemann, “For the Life of the World”
Ok, sure, but the holidays are coming, my wife is in a funk, the kids are tearing the place up, and if I don’t work, nothing happens. And then you know what? Resentment seeps in, freezes hearts, expands, and cracks us all wide open.
This has been our cycle for almost two decades. This is where my antipathy toward “ideology” comes from. The ideal seems like a cruel joke.
And yet, “the obstacle is the way.” The truth of it finally took root the other day. “Ahhhh,” I thought, literally right there in front of the Keurig coffee machine in my Purgatorial office building, “The obstacle…is the way.” (Said a la Nicolas Cage in “Face Off.”)
The joy of discovery quickly gave way to foreboding. There’s no “right” way to do this. There’s no trick, hack, one special thing: the struggle, the strife, the often ball-busting daily grind is the only road, pardner.
I think I’ve known it for awhile. I just didn’t want to face it, in large part because on this, my wife and I differ a bit. She thinks, I believe, that life can be well and truly properly ordered by and through the intentional application of certain attitudes and practices. I can agree that life needs to be properly ordered that way, but it’s not a permanent state. Everything must be reset every single day. She’s still hoping to “get there.” I am too, but I think “there” is on the other side of the Veil.
Knowing this, it makes the daily battles joyful. Sometimes. Nothing can destroy enlightenment like getting your belt loop hooked on a silverware handle in the midst of a three-way conversation with the wife and kids. (Especially when you’re watching the dog sniff around the kitchen garbage can, which she knows is a naughty Zelda.) But it takes the edge off, at least.
Believe me, I don’t embody or embrace this positivity every day. (I struggle not to qualify “positivity” with “nauseating.”) It may seem sick or delusional to call resignation to the struggle liberating, but it is. I don’t have to make an argument for it, or do daily affirmations. It just is.
Knowing that changes the game from “Woe is me,” to “Bring it.”