The Eleventeenth Era

Sometimes I feel like a broken record. The amount of times I have to repeat things in order for them to actually stick in my boys’ brains is obscene. “Wash your hands.” “Seat belts remain ON until this car is NOT.” “Use your fork, not your hands.” “Shoes go in the shoe bowl.” “If you share, you get twice the toys.” “Inside voices.” “Uh-huh or yes ma’am?” “Sharpies are adult tools.” “Flush!” “Knowed is not a word.” “Nobody appreciates potty talk.” “Your shirt is not a napkin.” “Bubbles are an outside-toy.” “Use your manners whenever you can.” “My bed is not a trampoline.”

You can imagine my delight when I realize that they are actually, in some cases, listening. A few months ago, during a quiet time one Sunday afternoon, I passed by their room and found them sprawled out on the floor side by side in a sea of books. I overheard Will saying to Sam, “Soon, you’re gonna be able to read too. And you know mama says ‘the world is open to you when you can read.’” I’ve only been imparting this truth to him since he could physically hold a book. I completely melted.

Tragically, I have found the reverse of this to also be true. I’ll admit that I was horrified to overhear Sam Hensley (not even a whole 24 hours after I had a small freak-out session with him on the way home from school one day) asking his stuffed emperor tamarin “Do I need to pull this car over and beat you? Do I??” Not one of my more shining parental moments. He didn’t even paraphrase. Got that one word-for-word.

But earlier this week - I was brought to tears by the realization that these non-flushing, dirty handed, grammatically challenged critters are indeed soaking some of the goodness in. It was super stormy in the early morning hours this past Tuesday and the thunder and lightning woke them up at least 45 minutes before my alarm was set to go off. I could hear them tumbling out of the bunk beds and the next thing I knew, they were on either side of me - hiding under my covers. They snuggled me for about 15 minutes and kept trying to chat me up until they realized I wasn’t going to be doing much conversing (did I mention 45 minutes before my alarm??). They eventually gave up and made their way to the den. I dozed off a couple of times but at some point, a monstrous clap of thunder woke me straight up. Knowing how scared they both are of storms, I literally hopped out of my warm bed and stumbled my way towards the den. I got to the library when I heard Will comforting his terrified younger brother. He said, “It’s ok, Sam! Remember what Enoch says. ‘God is with us. God is always with us.’” I wept.

Enoch is our pastor and I go to church on Sundays to hear him say (among a list of others) those very words. They are words that have been a great comfort to me. He says those words from the pulpit. He says those words in his prayers. He sometimes says those words in the weekly letter on the front of the bulletin. He said those words sitting across from me in a blue hospital chair on the oncology floor while Anthony quietly slept between us, doped up on delotid. He never said, “The cancer is probably not as bad as they are saying it is.” He never said, “You know Anthony is not going to die.”  He just reaffirmed what I know to be true. “God is with us. God is always with us.”

I remember the day we lost Jim Simmons - sitting in Holly’s living room - people coming in the door, bearing food, bearing gifts, wanting to help, wanting to make sense of such a devastating tragedy. People from her church, people from Georgia Power, people from the neighborhood. I was paralyzed with grief and overwhelmed by even the thought of what my dear friend was about to have to wade through in the aftermath of losing her husband, losing the father of her two young children. It is one of the most horrific days I can recount and I can’t even fathom how she made it through that day or the multitude of days that directly followed. Enoch had been out of town and was getting ready to head back home when he got that heartbreaking news. Once he arrived in Savannah, he came straight over. I don’t know what words of comfort he spoke to Holly when he was there but I do know that I called him at 8:00 pm on my way home from her house - because I needed to hear him say those words to me. And he did.

I think those words are reassuring because they’re not empty. They are no blue sky promise. They are simply words that remind me there is no crevice too small, no expanse too vast, no low so low that you can suffer it all on your own. Sometimes I feel ill-equipped as a parent. I am critical of the job I am doing when my boys can’t for the life of them find the words ‘thank you’ without a prompt. I want to crawl in a hole and die when Sam Hensley is hysterically wailing on the floor of the Piggly Wiggly about the injustice of me not purchasing fruit snacks unless they are on sale.  I feel guilty that I assigned Will the weekly chore of taking out the recycling to the alley only to reclaim the chore for myself because he busted me for “recycling” some of his drawings. I feel wretched when I need to give Sam some Benadryl and the only bottle of it I can find is both crusty and bearing an expiration date of 2005.

All this to say, most days I can’t see any proof that the directions and mantra I find myself repeating over and over again are making any sort of dent on the characters of these small people. But some of it must be. Some of it is sinking in. And though my hope for them over time is that their notion of God’s presence is augmented by their own experiences, I think it’s a good foundation to be certain of this truth. And if I had to choose between them improving their table manners or learning to be soothed by good words, well I suppose I’d happily forgo the forks for awhile.

After a brief 12 day stint in the hospital, my Pop - William Johnson passed away on Friday afternoon, May 22, 2009 at the ripe age of 96. This is the eulogy that I tearfully gave at his memorial service.

It’s all but impossible to sum up the affection I have for my Pop. It’s 33 years in the making and is as much a part of me as my first name. I loved this man. And anyone who knows and loves me, knows and loves my Pop. My cousin Andrea and I often refer to the fact that we were cut from the same cloth. The core of that cloth, undoubtedly, is the appreciation and adoration verging on obsession that we have for all things Pop: his red knit sweater vests, his limey cokes, his love of SAM’s Club, his egg nog, his hats on Sunday, his typewriter. We felt the same way about my Granny and truth be told, so did he. Which is one more thing I loved about him - how much he truly loved her.

I’ve been thinking a lot about him in these past few weeks - in this sort of a light, ever since I got the call at work saying that he had been admitted into the ICU, knowing that at some point I’d be right here trying desperately to articulate what he meant to me. And it’s overwhelming because there are layers and layers of love there.

But I did spend some time thinking about what his life’s example has meant to me and my life. I thought of some of the simple lessons that he has imparted to me and not by saying but in his doing.

• take your time
• plan ahead
• don’t take more than you need
• make good use of what you have been given
• be grateful
• if you say you’re going to do it, do it
• if you borrow something, return it as soon as you are able
• don’t be a teetotaller

Ok - that last one he actually said.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how intentional his actions were. I see him meticulously buttering a plate of homemade biscuits at the kitchen table on North Howell, measuring out rum for cocktails at happy hour, tilling neat rows out in his garden, filling up the bird feeders, sitting at his typewriter typing up a recipe or a letter, adding to the tidy stacks of wood in the wood pile out back, filling up the tiny ice cube trays, backing out of the garage and then the carport carefully and cautiously, watching him methodically starting a fire in the back den.

I had the good fortune of growing up in the same city as all four of my grandparents and so the house on North Howell was a significant part of my formative years, so much so that it is hard to separate my memories of him with the memories of that place. But I began thinking of all of the places we had traveled together as well as the great distances he had traveled over the years to see me. I can smell the inside of his car - the long umbrella hanging behind the front seat, the box of kleenex, the tiny trash can, the soft cushy seats. I think of

• our car rides over to Middle Tennessee to visit Tat & Abner and driving through Zion to see where he grew up
• trips to Atlanta to see the Braves play
• us in Lawrenceville for Christmas the year that Ginger told us that Leslie was on the way
• Pop at Pickwick riding out in that boat, bartending for happy hour, partnering with Jerry in a serious card game in an effort to take down the Queens of Hearts
• the drives to Heber Springs, Arkansas and of him eating catfish
• Pop in a field in Knoxville, picnicking following my graduation from architecture school
• Pop’s trek out to the west coast to visit me and Anthony in Pasadena and getting to take him to the Santa Anita Racetrack where he had been stationed 60 years prior for training in December of 1942
• our drive up to Charlottesville with mom to visit my sister and getting to go on a tour of the Washington & Lee campus with him - walking on his old stomping grounds, seeing buildings where he had studied so many years ago, having lunch in a restaurant where he would often “treat” himself when he was in school

The months preceding his 90th birthday celebration, I took on the project of putting together a small biography of his life. I intended to record his 90 years but after over 20 hours of taped interviews, both in person and over the phone - I only made it through 33 years of his story which somehow seems ironic now since that is the same amount of time that I have been alive. But I learned so much about him in those interviews - about his time in the service, about his childhood days, about his Gatsby-like pursuit of Mary Ligon. His recollections were so vivid - so full of life. I grew to appreciate how he had gotten to where he is in his life, learning how tough he had actually had it in his early days: losing his father when he was a mere 11 year-old boy, the financial hardship that followed, his struggles to finish college - his start at W & L and his transfer to Marshall University his junior year because there was not enough money to cover his tuition, his year of leave in the Civilian Conservation Corps and how his father’s younger brother finally offered to pay for him to finish out his education at W & L where he eventually graduated in the spring of 1936, six years after he had entered. And then how he lost his mother suddenly to a stroke the day after he married Mary Ligon. Learning all of these things gave such perspective to his life.

Pop and I would talk on the phone every few weeks or so and though I know that he would tell my mother that he enjoyed my calling, most times he was unwilling to talk more than 6 or 7 minutes, not wanting to put me out. But on the anniversary of Granny’s birthday this past February, I called him in the evening on my way home from a meeting at church. I had needed to stop by the grocery to pick up a few things and had about a 12 minute window. I was hoping to keep him on the phone that entire time. When I pulled into the parking lot of Kroger, I had the sense that he was up for talking a while longer. I was thrilled. It was raining that night and I sat in my car, glued to the phone - hanging on every word he said. At least twice he stopped me and said, “I should really let you go. I don’t want to run up your telephone bill.” At least twice, I assured him that I had called from my cell phone and that all calls after 7:00 were free so it was absolutely no burden to me. What I didn’t have the heart to tell him was that I would have paid any amount of money to have that conversation with him.

He told me several stories that night - some I had heard, some I had not. He talked about that period of time when Granny’s twin sister Mart had lost her husband to a heart attack. They had been living on the west coast and, following his death, had traveled across the country to Chattanooga to live with Granny & Pop for an extended stay. It’s a story I had heard many times before and one which I love to imagine: my Pop in that tiny house with Granny, his 3 girls, Granny’s sister and her 2 girls, (Pop + 7 females, as I like to call it.) But that night, he added details to the story, key components that I had no considered before - like how grief stricken the newly widowed sister had been. Of course she was - how had I failed to consider that angle? But he talked about how helpless he felt - how he could provide a roof over her head but could do very little to ease her aching heart.

He talked a bit about his time overseas and specifically about the long and laborious ship ride there and back which took several long weeks. He talked about that first Christmas that he and Granny spent together out in San Francisco just two months after they had married and about how sad she had been to be away from her family. It’s a story I love to hear - how he vowed to her that he would do everything in his power to see to it that she was with her family at Christmas time, a vow he surely made good.

He talked about the Christmas in Middle Tennessee in 1945, following his return home from the war - how all 5 of the sisters were home in their parents’ house in Mt. Pleasant with the husbands in tow, every one practically sleeping on top of each other. He recalled the celebrations (and libations) and what a joyful time it was. He sounded so alive recounting the story. He eventually said, “Those times sure were good and they are, unfortunately, gone forever.” That conversation changed everything for me. In my heart, I had prayed no less than a hundred times prior for him to be healthy and live to be at least a hundred, out of pure selfishness. Because I didn’t want to imagine a single day in my world without him.

As we said goodbye a final time, I looked at my phone and there, as definitive as a time stamp, was the recorded duration of our call: 1 hour and 16 minutes.

As I sat in my car, sobbing quietly, taking in all that he had said - I felt an overwhelming feeling of relief. In all honesty, every conversation I had had before that night, I had been overcome with fear that every single call might be the last time I would ever get to talk to him. But in that rainy parking lot, I realized with great clarity the fullness of his life. He was 96 years old. He had outlived his father, his mother, his brother Gene, his beautiful wife with which he shared almost 62 years of marriage, all 4 of his wife’s sisters and all of their husbands. He had survived a world war, raised 3 beautiful girls, was able to send each of them to college, see them marry and become independent adults with families of their own. He had had a life long career as an accountant for TVA and had found such a home in Brainerd Presbyterian Church. He was able to be an active part of the lives of 7 grandchildren and was able to live to see 4 great-grandchildren coming into the world. His first grandson and his first great-grandson were named in his honor, something in which I knew he took great pride. He had a glorious retirement and a life with very few health concerns. What more could we possibly ask for on his behalf?

The final call had to come at some point and, of course at the time, I did not know it would be my last conversation with him. He called two days before the Kentucky Derby to make sure I had my mint julep cups ready. We was in great spirits and he couldn’t know how much I relished hearing his voice. I love that that call was my last one.

And I feel peaceful that this is how it finally shook down. Brett came to Chattanooga last Monday to be with Pop. When things took a turn for the worse, my mom sent for her sisters and they both came to his side as soon as they could possibly get into town. I felt like Brett was there proxy-ing for all of the grandkids who couldn’t be right there and he thankfully would send me text updates on Pop’s situation. On Wednesday night, I wrote to him asking, “Are all of the sisters there now?” This was his response: “Yes. Martha has a hand on his right leg, Kittie is petting his right arm, Ginger is touching his left shoulder, John & Lenora Perry are holding each other.”

And we cannot ask for any more in our lives than to have lived fully and to have spent our final days under the careful, loving watch of those closest to us. He is home. He is reunited. I am thankful for the 33 years that I had him in my life.

We went to Atlanta a few weekends ago for a baby shower. One of my best girlfriends is expecting a little girl at the end of spring. In all honesty, it’s not really fair to claim her as “my” girlfriend. She’s actually the only friend that Anthony and I both have in common who goes back further than the two of us both being Hensleys. We all went to architecture school together and she has a special place in our life: our only “our” friend. Not that he doesn’t genuinely love my friends and consider them friends of his but they are at the core “my” friends and god forbid we ever divorce, I’m taking all of them back. But our friend Katie will have to be a part of the settlement. She’ll be an item for which the lawyers will have to figure out an amenable custody agreement - she’ll be on the list with our massively obese orange cat Josephine (aka Feenie-kins Hensley, as Will likes to call her).

But back to Atlanta. We drove all the way to Chattanooga the day before to drop our boys off at my mom’s house. We woke up early the next morning to get on the road. When my mom realized how early we were leaving, she said, “I thought the shower didn’t start until 4:00,” clearly unaware of how long it has been since the two of us have spent more than a few hours without our children in tow. “We’re making a day of it,” I told her. And that we did.

Katie and her husband just moved into a new house the week before this baby shower took place - their very first house actually and the party was there. It’s a great house - it’s open and warm, it’s surrounded by trees and already feels like them. And the nursery for this little girl on the way is absolutely precious. Katie told me ahead of time that the theme, if there actually was a theme, was birds. And it is a nursery straight out of a magazine - two shades of pale green on the wall, these beautiful curtains with bright pink and green circles (that Katie made with her own two hands), this very unique bird mobile which is very architectural, these beautiful paper bird night lites and a treasured wooden cradle that was made by a relative almost a century ago.

I couldn’t get enough of the room. Standing in that nursery reminded me of that threshold - that weird segment of time where your whole life has changed in the anticipation of the arrival of this person but the person hasn’t yet breathed life into your life. I remember the last few months of being pregnant with Will how Anthony and I would just go and sit in the perfectly put together little nursery (undoubtedly the only tidy room in our house at the time) and wonder about him - what his feet would look like, how his hair would smell, what books he was going to love to hear time after time. How I would open the drawers of his little dresser and fold and refold his tiny little clothes - and wind his music box and let it tink, tink, tink until all was quiet. This baby girl’s room brought these thoughts of those days back to the surface and I kept finding myself returning over and over to sneak another peek at it. 

When the actual party took place, the house was filled with friends and sisters, coworkers and family - Katie’s parents, her real estate agent, her personal trainer, her mother’s brother, her best friends. There were several people who had traveled great distances to share in the special occasion. It’s a fine sized house but it was bursting at the seams with well wishers. It was a delightful party. A few kids were in attendance. One was this spunky 2 year old girl in boots. Katie’s sisters had made these pretzel appetizers with melted hershey kisses on them, topped with an m&m. This little girl quickly found these delicious little diddies and I watched her eat the chocolate off of them and then proceed to carry around the pretzels. I wasn’t the only one who noticed. I overheard Katie tell her sister Lainie about the chocolate fingers and how nauseous she felt at the possibility of those fingers making their way to the new curtains that she had just hung in the baby’s room. It’s a fair thing to stress over. Don’t get me wrong. But when she finally verbalized this worry to me, I said “Welcome to the rest of your life.” 

Because the truth is - kids are messy and they touch things and break things and get chocolate finger prints on things that you don’t want them to get finger prints on. And no amount of watching them will keep these things from happening. You simply cannot watch them at all times. They will likely ruin things that are sentimental to you and find a way to use crayons to scribble nonsense inside your family bible. They will likely spill juice on furniture from cups that are supposed to be spill-proof. They might find scissors and possibly cut your comforter cover in more than one place. And if you happen to have a child who has extra-wide feet (which requires you to buy special extra-wide shoes at Stride Rite), your child will undoubtedly step into your friend’s bird bath and ruin the sneakers for which you paid $50. They might even paint your father’s bathroom with Aquafresh toothpaste. These things might happen and you will likely not get to a point where you don’t worry that they will.

But what I didn’t have the heart to tell her is that, while you will not stop from stressing over chocolate fingers and the possibility of your child finding the scissor drawer, these are the small things that you won’t even notice that you are worrying about. And here’s where the threshold really draws a line between before your baby comes and after they have taken over your life. Because once they have come into the world, you will worry about things that you didn’t even know you could worry about. You will worry about the car seat not being installed securely enough. You will worry about the car seat straps being too tight. You will worry about your baby sleeping too much. You will worry about your baby not sleeping enough. You will worry about something happening to your baby while you are sleeping and what if you do not hear them crying? You will check on them multiple times a night while they are sleeping to make sure that they are still breathing. You will doubt the reliability of your baby monitors and will likely test out their range incessantly. You will worry about leaving your baby with sitters. You will worry about leaving them with daycare associates. You will worry about the entire concept of daycare as a whole and work the math and re-work the math to figure out how it can be avoided. You will worry about them eating too much. And about them not eating enough - and about food allergies and will you recognize the signs and side effects soon enough? You will ponder the question of organic vs. non-organic baby food. and worry about blankets in their crib. and germs. and mold spores and pet dander. and about smoke alarms and about carbon monoxide detectors.

And then once they are big enough to not be merely fragile infants and they have learned to talk and dress themselves, you will worry about bigger things. about them being afraid of things. of the dark. of being alone. You’ll worry if they will befriend other kids easily, and if they will be understood by their teachers. And if they will survive other kids on the playground telling them “you’re not invited to my birthday party.” It reminds me of that Elizabeth Stone quote. “Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” This is the part that no one told me about. I heard all about the pains of labor and how scary the epidural needle was going to be. And how much sleep I would forgo in those first months. But no one really imparted to me how bringing a child into my life was going to simultaneously be the most joyful and terrifying thing ever.

And it is. And though I felt that maybe I should have imparted some of these truths to Katie, the truth is - she’s going to be a wonderful mama and will find out all of these things on her own. And the flip side to all of the worry is all of the delight and joy that exists in this whole thing. And I reveled in seeing her on the cusp. Because I know what is coming. And though her experience will be unique to her, I know that by the next time Anthony and I see our only “our” friend, her whole world will have changed colors and there will be permanent chocolate fingerprints all over her life.

My mother’s sunday school teacher from home, a dear man whom I adore, emails out these weekly points to ponder every Sunday night which range from funny to sarcastically sticking to profoundly thought provoking. I’ve been on his email list for a few years now and it’s uncanny how often the quotation arrives in a timely fashion and speaks rather directly to what is going on in my life. A few weeks back, the quotation came from Ann Landers:

“People who drink to drown their sorrow should be told that sorrow knows how to swim.”

True. So true. But it immediately made me ask, does sorrow know how to sing?

After a series of hard events over the past few months, I will admit - sorrow is much closer to the surface of me than is usual and though I partake and often rely on more than an occasional cocktail, I don’t find myself trying to drown my sorrows in this fashion. But it made me think of something my good friend Jennica and I have been trying to dissect for quite some time and that is the concept of karaoke as therapy.

For those of you who are familiar with karaoke, you get me. For those of you who might not have much experience with the power of this stellar japanese art form, allow me to introduce a few key aspects of it. And as Jennica likes to say, ‘There are two kinds of people in this world. Those who get karaoke and those who do not.’ Please don’t misunderstand me. I am no karaoke expert.  And these are not rules to karaoke but rather personal observations that I have made about participating in karaoke as well as some factors that allow you to get the most out of karaoke [aka - enabling yourself to experience karaoke as therapy].

Firstly, you don’t have to have a great singing voice to be good at karaoke or to get something positive out of it. Letting an average singing voice hold you back automatically excludes you from the power of good that can come of this act. 

Secondly, just because you like a song, doesn’t mean that you are going to be good at singing it. This observation isn’t intended to keep you from singing it anyway - just a measure of ‘be aware’ is all. A good rule of thumb is not unlike one I often hear concerning writing: ‘write what you know.’ It might not be a bad idea to stick to songs that you really know. And you know what I mean by know. 

Thirdly, and maybe most importantly, set aside a generous amount of time. Karaoke is made of up a series of phases, not unlike sleep and, as such, you have to allow enough time to let it all play out. Two hours of karaoke is simply not enough. It’s like setting aside thirty minutes for a catnap and wondering why you wake up not feeling like you’ve had an eight hour night’s rest. REM sleep cannot occur during a nap and karaoke as therapy is not likely to occur with a mere two hour session.

Now, I’ve noticed that the length of the phases varies depending upon the make-up of the participants. A group of people who all know each other [and who participate in karaoke together on a regular basis] creates a very different experience than a mixed bag of regulars and newcomers. But either way, there is always a sort of ‘warm-up’ session. You just can’t walk in off the streets and sing something massively heavy. This starter phase is typically made up of a series of rounds of light-hearted ditties and humorous picks. ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ or ‘Billie Jean.’ Safe picks that are fun to sing and not too insanely challenging to tackle. And each person brings their own voice [and I don't mean literal voice] to the table. I am no singer but if I were, my voice would hover somewhere between Journey and Def Leopard with a tiny bit of Shania Twain on the side. Other combinations might be more in the realm of Puff Daddy meets The Beatles [circa-Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band]. Again, the variation comes from the eclectic-ness of the participants and the possibilities are endless. 

A possible second phase that I will coin ‘the anthem phase’ can easily grow out of the first phase, especially if drinking is involved and even more especially, if the group is an all-female crowd. Upon completing several rounds of warm-up songs, the atmosphere is comfortable enough to warrant such lyrics as ‘it’s a do or die situation’ in a confident fashion as only Pat Benatar can inspire. Kicks are extremely prevalent during this phase and common themes include taking on the world, bucking the system, any form of revenge as well as ‘I told you so.’ And don’t get me wrong- there are all kinds of therapy opportunities in these earlier phases but I think they are more obvious. Of course it’s therapeutic to sing your heart out to Heart. How could it not be? Of course it’s good for your soul to sing back-up vocals to ‘Midnight Train to Georgia.’ Who hasn’t been on that train? Other phases that can stem from the first phase include ‘category phases’ which could be anything from 80’s hairband tracks, to a series of east coast vs. west coast rap to an intense Madonna session. The possibilities are endless, depending of course upon the varied selection of karaoke cds that you have at your disposal.

And alas, the final phase. Alas, the karaoke as therapy realm. In order for this final phase to occur, most of the participants have to have been weeded out by this point. In my observations, this works best when only a small core remains and the closer the people who are left are, the better it works. I’ve done a lot of thinking about this, trying to figure out exactly what parameters help define this elusive realm and I think it gets there when you begin singing slightly woeful songs that are seriously meaningful to who you are and where you have been. I think music is crazy powerful and there are specific lines in songs that have, over the course of my 32 years, become imprinted in my being - whole songs from which I could not likely be separated for very long without serious damage to my health, (well, my mental health, at the very least). These are songs or pieces of songs that are undoubtedly on the soundtrack of my life. Songs are almost like smells in the way that they can place you back in time. And listening to songs that are really meaningful to you, songs that mark a particular time period in your life, songs that have played a key part in you becoming you is deep-down good for your being. But taking it a step further by actually singing these songs in closely knit company, well it’s a free session on the doctor’s couch. 

And here’s how it has played out for me. Singing any of the tracks off The Unforgettable Fire is therapy. Bellowing the painfully hard lyrics of Pink Floyd’s ‘Wish You Were Here’ is therapy. “Running over the same old ground, how we found the same old fears…” Listening to Jennica solo Radiohead’s ‘Creep’ adds years, (and good years, mind you) to my life. Taking on any Pearl Jam song immediately transforms me to me at 17. It’s therapy because it serves to remind me of who I am and that part of who I am is the culmination of how I have gotten here - here in the florida room at 2400 Bonaventure Road, singing ‘No Surprises’ at 2:40 in the morning. 

These songs serve to remind me of times that have passed, of people whom I have loved very intimately (though some I, unfortunately, no longer know), of places that I will not likely be again. Singing these remind me of some painfully low times, of my own coming of age, of my first real feelings of belonging, of my own independence, of my youth, of girls I have loved, of boys I have loved, of winding drives on Missionary Ridge, of late nights spent in the architecture building in Knoxville, of a collection of summer afternoons spent on the shady banks of Barton Springs, of train rides across the Czech Republic, of many sleepless nights in a garden apartment in Pasadena. Singing these songs makes me forget that I have a mortgage to pay and that I am three months overdue in taking my cats to have their annual shots and that I haven’t flossed in weeks and all of the other meaningless minutia that serves to distract me from being in touch with my real life on a daily basis. I am one of the most nostalgic people I know and sometimes I find myself longing for me at 17 or me at 23 and though my initial reaction is a pang of sadness to songs that place me in those passages of my life, actually singing those songs reinforces that I am alive and that all of the good that came before brought me to the good that is now and present and is happening all around me.

I’ll admit, I am a person with more than my fair share of pet peeves, hang ups and personal neuroses. Five years of architecture school rendered me particular to a whole slew of things, and you can imagine that adding small humans into my life has only amplified these neuroses, (or maybe more correctly, given me a whole new field of things about which to be neurotic). As there are too many categories to cover successfully, I find myself having to prioritize carefully those that I translate into my parenting (or maybe more correctly, narrowing down the ones that I cannot keep to myself and, therefore, must subject my children to on an almost daily basis).

One category, about which I am borderline psychotic, is the issue of gender. This rears its head in several places (aka, there are many pet peeves involved with this specific issue). Think of a diagram where ‘gender‘ is the top of the tree and it branches itself off into several sub-categories, one of which is ‘infant paraphenalia.’ I have a personal pet peeve concerning baby items that are thoughtlessly intended to represent one sex or the other. You know, the blue onesies that are covered with tiny footballs and the pink ones that have the ballet slippers. Because boys like sports and girls like ballet. Period. 

I won’t go so far as to say that these items offend me. I just take exception to them because I feel like certainly we can do better. These feelings are likely rooted in the fact that, as a kid, I was a posterchild for tomboys everywhere and was a girl who loved sports and wouldn’t have been caught dead in dance shoes. My mother tells me that by the age of 2, I was already refusing to wear dresses. She couldn’t even get them over my head. 

But my personal hang-up about the infant stuff has more to do with deciding things about who kids should be or what kind of things they should like before they even get to an appropriate age to like things all on their own. I just don’t think that kids fit so neatly into these arbitrary categories and, as a parent, I will go out of my way to break down those barriers for them. I think kids and people as a whole are way too sophisticated to be all one thing or another. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-sports or anti-pink. When my boys get to be old enough to love soccer, I’m all about buying soccer things if they have an interest. But the other side of that is, it’s ok if they don’t like soccer. They can like music or reading or astronomy or animals or even dance.

So all of this is background information to the following story, part 1 of which occurred last fall. Will Hensley is very big on favorites and loves to ask me about 43 questions a day that start like this: “which one you like?” The purpose of these questions is to dissect my favorite color, animal who lives on the savannah, cereal, Diego character, type of tractor, etc. One day earlier this past October, he’s holding up these colored straws and asks me “Which color you like?” to which I reply “the blue one.”  I didn’t know at the time that I should have braced myself but, in hindsight - I should have braced myself because this is how he responded to my request: “You can’t pick blue. Blue is a boy color.”

Whaaaaaat? Boy color?? It was like someone just said the “N” word in my presence. I whip around on him so fast and accusingly (and admittedly, a tad psychotically) ask him, “who taught you that??” I’m like the mother lion who realizes that something has encroached on her young. Despite my extreme efforts of keeping this child out of blue soccer ball tees and binkie clips with basketballs, some outside force has poisoned him with the concept of ‘boy colors.’ He stiffens up and recognizes my seriousness but I can sense that he doesn’t really understand what he has said that has brought about my insane tone. He refuses to say which makes me repeat it again in an on-the-verge-of crazy voice by carefully annunciating each word individually with emphasis: “who-taught-you-that??” I finally get it out of him that he’s learned this at school but he won’t admit specifically who has enlightened him to these repressive hues on the stereotypical color wheel. I immediately go into a tirade about how there are no such things as ‘boy colors’ or ‘girl colors’ and that you can like any color that you want from pink to black to peacock blue. He has no words for me but quickly hands me the blue straw.

I’ve had to remind him of this truth on a few other occasions but for the most part, I have felt like I squashed the whole ‘boy color’ thing with my initial rampage. But this past weekend, when we were at Publix (where shopping indeed is a pleasure), we were on the pet food aisle and he asked if we could stop and take a look at the pet toys.  We’re looking at all of the choices and he picks up this stuffed, bone-shaped toy that is lined with pink stitching and says “ooh, mama - this one is for a little girl dog.” The same crazy mother lion overtakes me and I ask, “what did you just say??” He practically stands at attention and blurts out as fast as the words can physically come out of his mouth, “there are no such things as boy colors?” Note the question mark at the end of his response as if to say ‘is this the magic statement that will make you go back to normal mode?’ Which makes me aware that he doesn’t fully understand the issue.

But that is the point. If he doesn’t yet really understand the concept of gender, he shouldn’t be spouting out things like “blue is a boy color.”  And trust me when I say, I’d prefer to tackle these issues as I feel he is ready but when faced with outside sources teaching my kid that there are limitations on the rainbow, I will have to defend my territory. So if he is spouting out one side or the other for lack of real understanding at this stage in his development as a person, I’d rather him be spouting out the things that I am trying to teach him (which is the right side of this issue, mind you). So I take the pink bone toy from his hands and look him dead in the eyes and say, “That’s right. There are no such things as boy colors and any dog would enjoy playing with this delightful toy.”

Again, I know this may seem over the edge. And I am honestly fully aware of my craziness but while the whole ‘boy color’ thing is likely harmless at this age, I think it is representative of a greater threat out there that can be manifested in many avenues. If you can be convinced at the age of 4 that blue is a boy color then you can also be swayed to believe, God forbid, that white is better than black. I don’t want him to be taught the wrong things before I feel that he is old enough to understand the right ones. And gender, specifically, is a tricky thing.

I think the core for me with this issue is that, growing up, I feel I was given the room to figure out and define exactly who I was as a girl all on my own and in coming into my own, I have grown quite comfortable with all of the specifics that make me the female I am. My parents didn’t try to sway me into things one way or another and, as a parent, I want to protect that freedom in the environment that I am working very diligently to create for my boys. And I just don’t think that we, as humans, need to fit into these arbitrary categories. I don’t think we are either pink or blue. It’s a spectrum and what makes us each unique is the combination of characteristics from each batch of color, for lack of a better separator. I am a sorority girl who played rugby, one who doesn’t own a single tube of lipstick but one who cries over Johnson & Johnson commercials and knows every word to the movie Pretty Woman. I prefer flats to heels, pants to skirts, steaks to salads and would choose a strong bourbon cocktail over a cosmo any day of the week. And yet I am obsessed with gift wrap, ribbon and embellishments of all kinds. And I love baby animals. I want my boys to feel free to figure out what they like without any limitations. Football isn’t for everyone but there is something out there that is. And just for the record, my favorite color is bird-egg blue.

Let me start by saying that the person who I like to think of myself as being and the person I actually am is not always the same person. For example, I like to think of myself as a person who likes to support the unique, local small businesses in my neighborhood. I love locally grown produce. I would pick a one-of-a-kind local restaurant over a chain 6 days out of the week. An independent bookstore brings tears to my eyes. And I love the idea of getting a christmas tree from one of those places that just sets up in a parking lot somewhere for the month of december - from a christmas tree farm that’s reasonably close by. I like thinking of those people growing the trees all year long and then living out in the camper next to where they’ve set up shop for the month - undoubtedly playing cards at night and drinking cocoa. And yet, tell me I get a mandatory, two-week, unpaid vacation at christmas and I cheap up faster than I can spell the word sellout.

This story takes place at the Home Depot, with the entire family in tow to pick out a christmas tree. Please note, had I been consistent with my idea of myself and been willing to fork over $50 for a christmas tree at one of those delightful little spots instead of saving $18 to get one at the super box retail mega-giant called the Home Depot, this incident would not have taken place. But I am cheap and $18 equals a medium size box of diapers so the Depot it is. In hindsight, there were many factors that likely contributed to my crazy reaction in the parking lot. We picked the boys up late from pre-school and they were already whiney and hungry and overly cranky. And then we get into the actual store and Sam refuses to stay in the cart and, instead proceeds to run up and down the aisles climbing in and out of the dozens and dozens of evergreen trees. And then Anthony quickly vetoes the tree that I pick out (the $28 tree) because it looks like a “shedder” for sure. Not to mention, I am feeling like a hypocritical loser picking out a tree at the Depot instead of at the delightful christmas tree spot set up at Daffin Park - the one roped off with temporary fencing and majestic white lights. Bear in mind, these lame feelings do not make me leave. I’m just saying.

So we purchase the tree for $32 and get it wrapped up in that magic web machine that flattens it out and I’m sidetracked with keeping Sam from jumping into the magic web machine when I hear this car laying on its horn. I turn around and Will Hensley is standing in the middle of traffic, about to be flattened like our Depot tree. I freak out all over the place and grab him back to the sidewalk, and proceed to head towards the car with a death grip on his tiny 4 year-old hand. And then it happens. We are walking towards the car and this rather obese lady is walking towards us, heading into the store. And these words come out of Will Hensley’s mouth at a completely regular volume, not under his breath, not in whisper-format. When she is right in front of us he says, “That lady is so fat!”

And I just thought I freaked out, moments before, when he was almost side-swiped by a Ford F-150. It was such a careless comment and it sounded so mean-spirited coming out of his little mouth and I know that he’s only 4 but I completely freak out all over him. It’s probably only twelve more steps to the car but he is drowning in tears by the time we reach the wagon. And the things that are coming out of my mouth - I have no control over them. It’s like I’m floating above the Depot parking lot, watching this flash forward of my sweet first born panning out to be a bully and this raging monster (me) has about 30 seconds to change the outcome of his character for the rest of his life. I can’t remember with much clarity even half of what I said but I seem to recall something along the lines of ”your words are so powerful and you have the choice to use them to build people up and encourage them or you choose to tear them down.” Where does this stuff come from? The scary thing is, I mean every word of it. There is nothing I abhor more than a bully. My final rant to him as I am clicking him into his car seat is this: “You will not be this person. Not on my watch.” 

I calm down and let him think on his actions the entire way home - the whole four minutes it takes us to reach the driveway and he’s completely soaked in tears and snot when I pull him out of the car. And there is a piece of me that is rational and fears that I have grossly overreacted. Again, I know he’s only 4. But the other part of me wants him to remember this night for the rest of his life. I am a big believer in teaching him to think for himself but there are some hard and fast rules that I don’t even need him to question. Like wearing your seatbelt. And not littering. And not calling people fat.

We go inside and I walk him upstairs and he cries his little heart out in my lap and I tell him I’m really sorry that I had to be so stern with him (aka freak out all over him like a crazy beyaatch) but that I insanely care about who he is as a person. I realize this is all over his head at this point but I need to say it all anyway. And here’s the rest of it. Will Hensley, here’s what you can count on from me. I may be slack when it comes to keepin’ it local and I might not make you brush your teeth twice a day like I should. And I might not keep your Papi from letting you watch too much television but know this: I will never be slack about you being a nice person. I will never be ok with you being careless and hurtful with your words. And I may be cheap and always looking to save $18 but I will never be frugal on being the watchdog of your character. Count on that.