The Power of Intention
Power of intention: a tool for navigating life
As published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette
Family life is a journey. Finding tools to navigate this adventure is essential.
As a Boy Scout I learned that the best way to avoid getting lost in the wilderness is to stay found. This seems to work well in life, too. So our family uses a number of practices throughout the year that help us stay connected to ourselves, each other, and the natural world we inhabit.
One practice is setting annual intentions, which we do by creating vision boards to welcome the New Year. As family projects go, this often takes a few weeks to complete.
We start with a pile of old magazines, print materials and crafting supplies strewn across the kitchen table. Using the images to guide our thoughts about what we want to create in the coming year we each clip pictures and words that reflect these intentions. Our kids, Zoe and Adam, hone their scissoring and literacy skills, and together we eagerly discuss our emerging visions, building a level of excitement and ownership about the year ahead.
After collecting a pile of clippings, we use glue sticks to affix them to our individual boards, with varying degrees of artistic flair. The kids decide the shape of our boards. Last year Zoe chose hearts. This year chickens, in honor of a successful project – building a coop and starting a brood of backyard chickens – which played a prominent role in our 2013 vision boards.
When the boards are complete we hang them from the curtain rod above our kitchen table where they serve as a constant reminder and source of conversation about where we are headed on this leg of our family journey.
For my wife, Lori, and I our boards generally reflect a mix of personal, family and professional intentions, which we discuss and reevaluate throughout the year. The boards also include tangible, family-centered activities, including camping trips, special projects and other adventures.
We make room for big and bold ideas, too. So building on last summer’s successful day hike in the White Mountains, the kids have decided they want our family to hike the Appalachian Trail — all the way from Maine to Georgia. That the trail runs through 14 states and is roughly 2,180 miles long matters little to their fertile imaginations.
For nearly 10 years, Lori and I have set annual intentions and, in recent years, designed vision boards as a way to create shared vision and direction for our family, before becoming parents and since. We have realized a surprising number of these intentions, often more abundantly than imagined. This has bolstered our appreciation for the power of intention, the belief that we have choices in life, including the choice to chart our future and to model this practice for Zoe and Adam.
Of course, the journey is filled with unexpected twists and turns. Assumptions prove inaccurate, conditions change and priorities shift — these are the guarantees in life. Yet we find that the practice of creating a shared vision, setting intentions and having ongoing conversation about our plans helps ensure that we do not wander too far off course before taking notice and reorienting — staying found.
And, observing Zoe and Adam dream big, realize success, adapt to unexpected events and negotiate disappointment — building their resilience and ours — is tremendously fulfilling.
So while we might not make it to Georgia, this year, lively family conversation has already begun to give form to our plan to hike a section of the trail this summer, a reminder that life is more about the journey than the destination.
Wood-stove warms home, kindles family ties
Wood-stove warms home, kindles family ties
As published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette
Winter in New England is cold. So two years after the infamous Halloween blizzard delivered a foot of snow, frigid temperatures and widespread power outages, we finally bought a wood burning stove.
After painstakingly researching our options, I was thrilled when a colleague offered to sell his lightly used stove, the same model we had decided was best for our home, at less than half the retail cost.
Propping a ladder on the porch roof, shoving a 25-foot stainless steel liner down the flue while tethered atop the chimney, and swearing like a pirate when it got stuck, made the purchase even more memorable.
Heating with wood is familiar to me. My self-reliant father taught me the benefits of this ancient practice during my youth, though I did not fully appreciate it at the time.
When my grandparents sold the land that served as a rural refuge from their suburban lifestyle, my father inherited the potbelly stove that had heated the farmhouse for decades. Drafted into his service, I assisted as he cut holes through the living room ceiling and roof, clung to shingled-pitch while inserting pipe down to the stove, and learned creative combinations of words not fit for school.
Newly restored, with polished pewter trimmings and shimmering Isinglass windows, the stove was gilded. Roughly 5 feet tall, it held a mass of wood that, when not carefully tended, produced so much heat we would prop the front door wide open in January.
In youthful bliss I was proud of that stove, failing to realize I had been conscripted into years of wood duty: Cutting, loading, unloading, splitting, stacking and transferring hardwood to appease the insatiable appetite of the stove. Even so, I was drawn to the work.
The physical labor and quiet woods tamed the angst of my body and mind. My father cut while I hauled and stacked, the shared labor and accomplishment tempered the father-son tensions of my teen years.
For more than three decades now, my father has fed that stove free wood. Self- employed his flexible schedule and resourcefulness are assets, allowing him to stray from his work when opportunity presents itself, hauling away what tree crews gladly leave behind or harvesting those felled by storms.
I have readily adopted his ways. In the past two years I’ve laid claim to a sugar maple left in our yard by a city crew, harvested two from a neighbor and two more from a friend across town.
At day’s end, needing a break from the confinement of my home office and the escalating cries of sibling rivalry, I head outside for some wood duty. Swinging the maul I work through the pile of logs while enjoying the cool autumn air and quiet of my own mind.
Waiting impatiently at a safe distance, 4-year-old Adam races to my feet when I rest, grabbing a load of wood and proudly sets about stacking the split pieces on wood palettes, working off his pre-dinner rambunctiousness in the process.
Noticing the mound of loose bark around the chopping block, Adam informs me, “It’s time to load the wheel barrel!” After we schlep a few loads to the scrap heap he quizzes me while we pause for a drink of water.
“Is the ax sharp?” “Can an ax chop ice?” “Is the ax heavy?” “Oh, sure,” I reply to each, feeling relaxed and agreeable.
Satisfied for now and eager to return to stacking, Adam says: “When are we gonna get back on the wood, Daddy?” And so we work side by side until nightfall, retreating to the living room with Mama and Big Sister, warming ourselves in front of the stove, ready for the next big Nor’easter.
Practicing gratitude as a family
Practicing Gratitude as a Family
As published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette
Sometimes the glass seems half-empty. I notice that when I feel this way it can lead to a house full of pessimism. So, I decided to sign-up for the 21-Day Gratitude Challenge sponsored by KindSpring.org.
Receiving a daily reminder to practice gratitude seems trite, but community support can bolster habit-change success, so I am grateful to receive them. The emails are timely, as my wife Lori and I have begun our annual discussion about how best to set expectations, with relatives and our kids, about the gift-giving season: Hanukkah and Christmas.
Our son, Adam, who recently received a trove of presents for his fourth birthday, has raised the stakes this year. Leading up to his big day, and ever since, his usual fascination with heavy equipment has taken new form. Now the sound of a delivery truck on our street leaves him expecting a package bearing his name headed for our porch.
The mailbox, once a fun place to find monthly magazines that are great for pre-nap snuggles and stories, is now a treasure chest for gift cards containing hard currency, which he has quickly learned can be converted to boom cranes or backhoes at the local toy store.
I delight in his pure joy, marveling at the breadth of his excitement, touched by his giggles. And, when my mother sent each of us a note expressing gratitude for her recent visit, I felt a twinge of sadness when Adam grabbed his envelope, tore it open and announced: “I hope it has money in it.”
So as I engage in my own 21-day practice, I recognize that cultivating a family practice of gratitude is an opportunity to both celebrate the joy of receiving and to inoculate our kids against the sense of entitlement, which increasingly permeates our high-consumption culture.
This is not entirely new terrain for us. We often begin supper with each of us sharing something about the day for which we are grateful. This is particularly useful in creating a more positive atmosphere when pre-dinner crankiness, including mine, threatens to infect the entire meal. Even better that Adam and big sister Zoe genuinely enjoy this practice, sometimes serving up two or three helpings of gratitude each.
Before kids, Lori and I stumbled upon the practice of creating a Thanks Giving Tree in preparation for the Thanksgiving holiday. Now, as soon as the buzz of Halloween subsides, the kids start asking: “When are we going to make the Thanksgiving Tree?” Next to the kitchen table we place a cardboard cutout of a tree on the wall. The kids cut colorful leaf shaped pieces from construction paper. On each leaf we list something for which we are grateful and then the kids use glue sticks to post the leaves on the tree. The activity fosters joy throughout the holiday season as we invite guests to add their own leaves of gratitude.
This year we will expand our practice of offering gratitude through the act of giving. Together we will assemble a simple collection of food, clothes, books and toys and gift them to others. And while we often self-servingly purge the clutter in our home through donation of such items, this time we will use the experience to talk about the joy of giving, by imagining the look on the faces of those who receive our offerings.
While Zoe and Adam might not fully appreciate the importance of these activities just yet, these practices do help create a spirit of gratitude in our daily lives. In the meantime, Adam will keep a watchful eye for delivery trucks and the mailman as the holidays approach, offering a precious reminder that the glass is always half full.
Getting boys to ask for help
Getting boys to ask for help
As published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette
Men don’t like asking for help. So conventional wisdom imparts. Think of men driving around lost, refusing to ask for directions. Sadly, reams of research demonstrate this tendency is more serious than driving in circles.
Men are less likely than women to ask for medical or mental health support. They also have higher rates of mortality and suicide than women, and demonstrate higher rates of unhealthy behaviors such as cigarette smoking, alcohol abuse, aggression and violence.
Additional research demonstrates boys and young men are less likely than their female peers to ask for help in school. In my years as a high school teacher, and now college instructor, I have witnessed countless examples of this pattern.
Predictably, this tendency leads to tragic, gender-based discrepancies in educational performance. By some accounts, male students receive 70 percent of all Ds and Fs, account for 80 percent of disciplinary problems, include 70 percent of diagnosed learning disabilities, and account for 80 percent of high school dropouts. Not surprisingly, males are far less likely to enroll in college than women, more likely to drop out, and earn only 42 percent of all undergraduate degrees.
As a teacher, I have grappled with these issues for years, experimenting with ways to promote the success of all students, particularly those, mostly males, least likely to seek support.
But as a father, watching our 4-year-old son, Adam, begin to shy away from seeking help, I wince at the thought that he is slowly accepting the code of boyhood.
Inwardly I ask: “In what ways do I as a father – a man — model to Adam a willingness to ask for help?”
This conversation is uncomfortable.
The loudest voice in me, the manly one, demands that my role, as father and husband, is to have answers, not questions. To offer support, not seek it. This voice learned long ago that boys should do things for themselves not offer pleas for help in the form of tears or whining voices. It’s a lonely voice, one that most men, and boys, learn to silently carry.
As a father, this voice is losing credibility with me. Watching Adam race up and down the block on his bike, occasionally crashing to the ground, I am astonished, but not surprised, at his reaction. With a hole torn in his pants, a bloody scrape on his knee and tears running down his cheeks, he quickly tries to compose himself, screaming to approaching adults, “No! Get away! Get away!”
He does not want to be consoled, not then, not in front of the neighbors, the older boys. He wants us all to believe he is fine. Only later, when snuggled in bed, after reading stories, will he let down his guard, with gentle prompting.
As Adam experiments with the voice of boyhood, a different voice grows stronger in me. I ask myself: “In what ways would life be both easier and richer if I was more open to seeking and receiving help?”
This conversation is refreshing. It leads to insight about how I might father Adam in a way that leads him to become a man who is both confident and humble, a man who comfortably asks for help. It is a conversation that promotes healthier relationships, for all fathers and sons.
Slowing pace of family life
Slowing Down September’s Frenzy
as published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette
Family life accelerates in September. A frenzy of activities replaces the dog days of summer, testing the organizing mettle of parents.
Last year, when our younger Adam started preschool, older Zoe began kindergarten and I returned to college teaching, school-scheduling challenges knocked my wife, Lori, and I off balance. We never stopped wobbling until the arrival of summer, when new scheduling challenges emerged. Now, a bit wiser and two years older, we vow to improve on past performance.
This year it started with the arrival of an August letter announcing the name of Zoe’s teacher, news she had awaited all summer. The letter was accompanied by a list of required school supplies. Granted, our first-grader and preschooler don’t need graphing calculators or I-Pads, yet, but the letter served as a reminder that closets full of pants, shirts, shoes, boots and coats are now two sizes too small.
The welcome letter also signaled the impending arrival of reams of required, albeit important, intake forms. Basically the same forms we completed last year, for each child, and will complete next year, for each child. But this year we were ready, deftly completing and returning the cascade of forms with minimal discord, so far.
Soon after, letters, emails and blog posts from the superintendent of Zoe’s public school, the business director of Adam’s pre-school, Zoe’s principal, Adam’s director, Zoe’s teacher, Adam’s teachers, Zoe’s PTO, and Adam’s parent cooperative co-chairs, started arriving. Each offered gracious greetings and highlighted important, not to be missed, school events.
With school calendars and work schedules in-hand, we now scramble to arrange child care for a string of gaps created by parent conferences, staff development days, early release days and holidays, and cross our fingers about sick days and snow days.
And while overwhelmed by this buzz of school activity last year, we are adapting well, coming to accept our place in this stage of the parenting journey. We also recognize the pace of life during the school year creates stress for Zoe and Adam, who, along with their parents, are still learning ways to manage life’s daily demands.
Following a full day of kindergarten and commuting by noisy school bus last year, Zoe routinely wanted a snack and lots of quiet, alone time to unwind her nervous system, sometimes not coming out of her room until dinner.
After expending considerable energy negotiating the sharing of building blocks and playing pirate on the playground last year, Adam routinely logged two- to three-hour naps, and on occasion would nearly fall asleep at the dinner table.
Two weeks into this school year little has changed: Zoe and Adam continue to crave down time and unstructured play when returning home from school. So, as we did last year, we avoid structured after-school activities, permit one weekend extracurricular per child, moderate social commitments and spend family time outdoors.
It’s not a formula that always works smoothly, and we recognize that as Zoe and Adam age, and their interests expand, they will likely want more active lives.
But for now, as the pace of life accelerates and pulls us in different directions — this September and throughout the school year — we will do our best to remember that slowing down is often what our kids most need, and one of the best ways for us to stay connected as a family.
Harvesting berries and insights
Harvesting berries and insights
As published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette
August can be exhausting for parents. The cumulative impact of camp schedules, missed naps, late nights, heat waves, and escalating sibling squabbles take a toll on kids, leaving parents frazzled. I now understand why my mother and her generation of peers eagerly awaited the first day of school.
So on a recent summer day when my wife, Lori, was working and I faced the prospect of a long day at home with our two restless kids, Zoe and Adam, I headed for the hills. We loaded the car with essentials: snacks, lunch, and drinks, caffeinated for me.
Under a cloudless sky we wound our way through a patchwork of small towns, forests and fields. The familiar drive, a route that also leads to our favorite apple orchard and state park, transported the three of us into joyful conversation about past adventures.
Before any back-seat yelling even started, we turned off a narrow gravel lane, arriving at Summit Farm for our third season of berry picking. I parked along the tired strawberry fields, smiling at the weekday absence of cars and people.
Focusing Zoe and Adam’s exuberant energy, I directed them to the barn where they collected a wicker basket with six cartons. Up the grassy slope and past the house, we worked our way deeper into a quiet, fertile land, encircled by a thick forest of sugar maples where rows of drooping bushes awaited our nimble fingers, and watering mouths.
We started in the less frequented back rows where the kids’ colorful caps disappeared under arched branches as they set about picking and eating.
Soon their voices echoed, each proclaiming, again and again, “I found the biggest blueberry in the whole world,” then shouting to locate each other in the green maze, and finally quieting as they picked alongside each other.
Much has changed since our first visit here, when pre-verbal Adam crawled from plant to plant, strawberry juice sticking to his fingers and dripping from his chin. Now he skillfully adds detail and humor to big sister’s ramblings. He also increasingly resists her tendency to direct his thoughts and moves, with shouts and shoves that seem bigger than his almost-4-year-old stature.
With my mind stilled by the landscape, I notice that Zoe is imposing her words and direction on Adam with the frequency and tone she often receives from me.
“Zoe,” I say, “I notice that the more you use your words to coach Adam, the more he yells at you.” “That’s because when I tell him what to do he doesn’t listen to me,” she replies, painfully confirming my self-realization.
“Do you think you use your words to coach Adam a lot because I use my words to coach you a lot,” I ask, to which a nearby mother who has just arrived with her children knowingly chuckles.
“Yes, you coach me too much, Daddy,” she tells me in a confident, soon-to-be first grader voice.
“Zoe, I will do my best to coach you less, and if you think I am coaching you too much, you can say: ‘Daddy that’s too much coaching,’” an invitation which I hope will empower her and, at some point, I will no doubt regret.
Then, I added, “And when Adam is yelling at you, can you do your best to stop coaching him so much?” She agreed, but I am under no illusion that we have seen the end of coaching and yelling in our family. Still, the insight I gained and the peaceful tone of the conversation was juicier than the biggest blueberry in the whole world, especially when the first day of school is still four weeks away.
Raising chickens worth the worry
For this family, raising worth the worry
As published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette
Raising chickens can evoke worry.
Concerned family and friends warned us that chickens transmit diseases, produce a foul stench, require daily attention, lead to heartbreak, require significant protective measures and cost a lot to feed.
But, then, so do children.
So after years of dreaming, our family has become backyard chicken farmers.
It started innocently enough. When we first moved to town, we walked the kids, preschooler Zoe and baby Adam, in the double stroller to a neighborhood farm where we emptied our week’s worth of food scraps into compost piles and watched the resident chickens merrily feast.
No matter the season or weather, it was a high point of our week as we breathed fresh air, stretched our legs and dreamed about creating our own farmstead.
News of our farm outings led a kindred soul to gift us a book on raising chickens.
Almost daily, the kids flipped through the pages picking their favorite hens, roosters and coops. Renters at the time, our aspiration had to wait.
That winter we bought a home perched on a standard city lot. Come spring we started our gardens and by summer began warming the neighbors to the idea of backyard chickens. All were enthusiastic. One neighbor offered sections of chain link fence from an unused dog kennel. A year later, just as the trees were shedding their leaves, the chicken run was cobbled together.
During the winter months Zoe and I surfed the web, researching chicken breeds and coop designs. After the spring thaw, we formed a backyard chicken cooperative with two neighboring families, with hopes of sharing the workload and forging deeper friendships.
Coop construction continued to find the bottom of the to-do list. So I decided to create a sense of urgency by ordering chicks from a local breeder. A few weeks later we brought the chicks home where they nestled in a cardboard box under a brooding lamp, in our basement.
With the clock ticking, I used time at home with the kids to work on the coop.
Adam joined me on a trip to a local sawmill where we acquired framing timbers and saw lots of big trucks. Zoe, a quick study, offered many suggestions about how to improve my handiwork.
They learned the names of tools and took turns handing me screws. Each practiced measuring, marking and cutting boards. Then, after a 15-minute work session, they would grow tired of the project, complain about the loud power tools, and nag me to play with them.
As the project crept slowly, the chicks grew quickly and so did concern. One worry led to another. I fretted about the remaining tasks, not enough hours in the day, and that we would become basement chicken farmers.
The kids worried the chicks were getting too big for their box. Lori and a neighboring Mama worried carnivorous critters would get into the hen house. Voice-mail messages from grandparents even started including queries about the well being of the chicks.
Eventually collective efforts prevailed. The chicks now inhabit a spacious coop and run, which have both been carefully constructed to keep predators at bay.
Each morning, while still wearing jammies Zoe pulls on her pink Hello Kitty boots and Adam his black and yellow firefighter pair. Then together they skitter across the backyard, open the coop and, in unison, say, “Good morning, Sweeties.” Throughout the day the kids climb in and out the coop’s side door, hand feed the chicks freshly collected worms and bugs, and eagerly await the first egg.
Come nightfall, after teeth are brushed, stories read and lights off, I skitter out to the coop and greet the brood as they huddle on their perch. “Goodnight, Sweeties.” I close the coop door and make sure the gate is latched, just in case.
Family Meditation Retreat
Meditation: a new kind of family time
As published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette
Family life can be hectic. So when our local YMCA offered a Joyful Breath family meditation retreat, my wife Lori and I thought this would be a great way to slow down and reconnect.
Our clan of four is accustomed to co-existing with 20 or more extended family members in a single cottage for a weekend, sometimes a week. And while this practice lends itself to a certain amount of craziness, we find the connection with family that comes from such close proximity mostly enjoyable.
Still, we wondered if it was realistic to attend a family meditation retreat with our kids, ages 6 and 3. Dinner, even breakfast, at our house can range from peaceful to outright insanity, and end-of-the-day meltdowns, if meal and sleep schedules shift, are common. Further, as any parents of young children can attest, a weekend away as a family is not a vacation.
But it had been years since either Lori or I had participated in a meditation retreat and we had long talked about ways we could bring our individual contemplative practices to the center of family life. So we decided to attend.
We were not alone. Roughly two dozen families attended, with nearly 20 children under the age of 10, and a handful of teens and young adults. Through work and school, all four of us knew other participants, which helped us feel connected to the group. Shared cabins, a field of tents, space for mediation and yoga, and outdoor group meals created an atmosphere where kids roamed freely and adults breathed deeply.
While the Monastics, seven men and women from a Buddhist monastery, infused the weekend with their joyful energy and dedication to mindful-living, the retreat was hosted by a historically Christian organization (mostly viewed as secular today), by a camp director of Jewish heritage, for a group of families from various faith-based and secular traditions.
Participants chose from activities that included formal contemplative practices such as sitting meditation, yoga, walking mediation and Dharma talks as well as canoeing, kayaking, swimming, nature-based activities and campfire singing with marshmallows.
The more formal meditation practices were for teens and adults but walking meditation and mealtime rituals were experienced by all ages and so these practices had the greatest impact on our family.
The idea of 50 children and adults walking mindfully and silently through the woods, for an hour, seems improbable, at best. Yet, the young children, and by extension their parents, seemed mostly comfortable in the relative silence. Their senses of curiosity and wonder were attuned to the landscape and critters we experienced as we threaded our way through wooded trails.
A surprisingly powerful aspect of the retreat was the mindful practice of shared meals. The Monastics rang a large meditation bowl and offered a prayer of gratitude before each meal, a practice we often use at home. Astonishingly, we all practiced silence for the first 10-minutes of each meal, a practice foreign to our family. Yet, introducing a practice of silence for the first few minutes of each meal set a tone for a relatively quiet and very enjoyable experience for the entire group.
Since the retreat, Zoe and Adam have successfully shifted, with gentle prompting, their rowdy household energy by kissing the floor with their feet, just as they learned during walking meditation.
We now practice the ritual of silence for the first 3 minutes of dinner, often at the request of Zoe and Adam, and this has helped restore a sense of calm and pleasure to what had become a particularly chaotic time of the day for our family.
While talking to one father-friend after the retreat, he remarked that he was not able to participate in the traditional meditation practices as deeply as he had hoped, which was also true for me. He also said that the weekend was the best family vacation his clan of four had ever experienced.
For me, and I suspect for others, one of the greatest gifts of fatherhood has been making a shift from a life where I was the center of my universe to a life where we, as a family, are the center of my universe. Our recent retreat experience helped me more deeply appreciate this welcome transformation.
Parenting, bicycles and learning to let go
Parenting, bicycles and learning to let go
As published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette (with revisions)
Kids learn when they are ready. My wife, Lori, and I were recently reminded of this when our kids spontaneously demanded to have their training wheels removed.
Last year they were content to zip up and down our dead-end street with four wheels, even when the neighborhood gang was pedaling and scooting proudly on two.
Soon we raced alongside our budding bicyclists as they learned to balance and we practiced letting go.
Neighborhood tradition includes riding from top to bottom of the side yard at the end of our block, where the grade is slight and the grass offers soft landings, which eased our minds and their bodies.
When they graduated to the adjacent alley, differences between our kindergartener and preschooler emerged.
Eldest Zoe was entranced by the bright, Forsythia blossoms lining the right edge of the lane. Each attempt ended the same; like a bee drawn to pollen she veered off the path and straight into the bushes, growing more frustrated each time.
“I can’t do it. I keep crashing. I will never be able to do it,” she cried.
Yet, with renewed determination she eventually succeeded, ever so cautiously.
After a few tearful attempts, Adam rocketed down the alley, banked the turn, zipped half way up the block, made a sharp 180 degree turn, headed back to the alley, and skidded to a stop, sporting a wide grin.
Each day they take to the streets with helmeted heads, honing their balancing, steering and stopping skills, wailing when they crash into parked cars, curbs, neighbors and each other, squealing at their successes.
Their confidence grows faster than mine. For more than a week I put the brakes on their repeated requests to ride on the bike path. Visions of them crashing into an oncoming bike muted their pleas.
Eventually we took an incident-free ride along the path, as I ran between them, Adam racing far ahead and Zoe taking in the sights. Emboldened by the experience, they began scheming about longer rides, leaving me excited and terrified.
As teenagers, my friends and I toured by bike for many summers, each trip hundreds of miles, camping along the way, thrilled to explore the world on our own terms. Despite our parents’ fears about cars, trucks and bears, we never incurred more than mosquito bites and sore muscles.
Then, I took their approval for granted; now, I’m awed that they allowed us to feed our adventurous spirits in this way.
As an adult, bike touring has been replaced by years of bike commuting, the past five pulling a trailer, first with Zoe, then Adam, too. Loading the kids into the trailer, our second car, is a family ritual.
In the early days, Lori and I took turns pedaling Zoe to and from day care, and to the farmer’s market on Saturdays. When Lori worked weekend shifts, I chauffeured Zoe to town for lunch and a big chocolate chip cookie to share. She would fall asleep on the way home; parking her chariot on the patio, I’d sip tea and read the paper until she awoke.
Later, Adam at her side, we rode to and from preschool, the parenting center, library, lunch dates, and parks; sporting water bottles and snacks, they belted out “Going on a Bear Hunt,” through heat waves and snowstorms alike.
The thought of biking with an empty trailer – worse yet, no trailer at all – leaves me feeling grief for the loss of this cherished stage of fatherhood.
This journey, filled with a zest for adventure, theirs and mine, and my attempts to ensure their wellbeing, is quite a ride. And, ready or not, Zoe and Adam are offering me a new opportunity to practice letting go, which will never be as easy as riding a bike.
Celebrating curiosity and the Earth, everyday
Celebrating curiosity and the Earth, every day
As published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette
Young children exhibit boundless curiosity. With two of them, each day offers a double-dose of wonder at our house.
Daughter Zoe’s curiosity has blossomed along with her emerging ability to read, write and count. She notices to, too and two all sound the same, yet have different spellings and meanings.
“What’s up with that?” she says.
Recently she informed younger brother Adam that the thousands come after the hundreds and the millions after the thousands. Adam dutifully repeated his sister’s instruction. Then they both started squealing about billions, trillions and gazillions.
In a moment of calm that followed, Zoe asked, “How big is infinity?”
A recent editorial reminded me that curiosity is not just the domain of young minds.
The piece highlighted a new proclamation from European cosmologists that the universe is now estimated to be 80 million years older than previously believed, meaning 13.81 billion years, basically infinity.
The editorial linked curiosity about the existence of the universe to a perennial question among philosophers, “Why is there something rather than nothing?”
So, I was delighted when Zoe recently asked: “What does nothing mean?”
Knowing the world’s most accomplished philosophers are unable to answer such vexing questions, I simply laughed and responded: “How can nothing mean something?”
Then we both laughed and Adam joined in, rattling off names of planets and noting which is farther from the other, leading him to his own philosophical query.
“What’s beyond outer space?” he asked.
Their questions inspire me. Yet, as a father, I wonder how to ensure that their curiosity continues to flourish as they come of age in an uncertain world.
Spring’s arrival helps ease my worries, though, reminding me that the Earth serves as an endless source of wonder. Outdoors their minds and bodies run wild, marveling as the bulbs they planted in the fall emerge in a rainbow of color. They scramble for their collection jars as a universe of critters crawl from the thawed ground. Zoe makes art with bark, moss and other natural objects while Adam uses sticks and rocks to explore his surroundings.
We celebrate Earth Day in the spring, a time when our minds and bodies awaken once more to our oneness with the Earth. Our annual celebration of the life-giving planet we inhabit is a gift to our children, an act of gratitude for the sense of wonder they so profoundly embody, which is reason to celebrate the Earth every day.
Fatherhood Journey 