What She Wound Up Taking

The day came two weeks ago for my 21-year-old daughter to move away to college. The school is only 45 minutes away, but that's far enough to qualify. Since she is sharing an apartment with her brother who remains in that college town, Rose said many times, "I'm not taking much."

However, the evening before the move found her combing through her possessions, filling bags and tubs with various necessities which, upon further thought, she realized needed to come along. So in the morning we filled up the Isuzu with clothes, toiletries, school supplies, and storage containers for the ride to Lawrence. Some of the things Rose took surprised me a bit. Some of what she left behind in her room surprised me as well, as I went up later to vacuum and check the windows and just stand and look around.

I imagine that time will tell what Rose really took with her. How many of my repeated admonishments and shreds of wisdom, all learned the hard way, made it into her bag to be taken out later, turned over and examined, and put into play? Was she listening, and did I say everything I needed to?

As someone once said, you may think nothing you say as a parent is penetrating your child's force field, but it is--because God did not give us a way to close our ears as we can your eyes.

This is an exciting and emotional season for so many mothers and fathers and children as college begins and they part company. I wish you all the best and fullness of heart and, some day, the reward of hearing what you told your teenager fall from her lips with the conviction of a new discovery.

Did you miss me

I am back after a busy month of family visits, both at home and away. In July I took ten days to visit my niece and her three little boys in Corning, New York, a town of steep hills, spectacular Victorian homes, and alleys. (These last I particularly appreciate since we do not have them where I live. During an evening's walk down one of them, I even came upon a house that fronted the alley, and I wondered if the children playing out front were uncomfortable when they had to give friends their address and point out how to get there.)

Of all the fine moments spent with my nephews, one rings in my mind with special clarity. As I labored up the sidewalk, returning to their house after a quick solo trip down to Market Street for a newspaper and coffee, I heard the 5-year-old from his perch on their front porch cry out "Aunt Ann is back!"

His happy cry, carried to me over the still, warm air of that lazy afternoon, told me that I had been missed. My return was cause from some brief excitement. I brought nothing back for them from the shops--no candy or stuffed animal or wind-up toy--just me in my old pink hat with a newspaper under my arm. Yet I was heralded as though I brought a sack of delights on my back.

Little Noah reminded me then and there of how our children (or nephews or grandchildren) look to us with a pure anticipation only found in little ones. It felt so good to realize that my return after barely an hour occasioned a small thrill; that I must be credited in his mind with something, even if it was as minor as the chance of playing another game of Beanie Baby toss.

Indeed, spending time with these children reminded me that we are huge in their minds, giants of knowledge and ability (even if they don't always obey these giants). Things I said but thought they paid no attention to I heard them repeat carefully to their parents, as though it were scripture, as they tucked them into bed that night.

What could work more wonders for a middle-aged woman's ego than that? Nothing comes to mind.

On Sunday morning

Do you take your little children to church? Every week? It's hard work to get them ready, fed, dressed up, hair brushed, shoes tied, and out the door. But what could be more important than teaching them that one day a week, at least, we honor the One who made us and all that surrounds us? They need to see that their parents take the time and go to the trouble.

Never again in their lives will you get the chance to teach your children what they learn in church, even if they squirm and don't seem to listen. They are nevertheless absorbing. If you think that you'll just sit them down later and tell them all about your faith, you may very well find that they have grown not only older but busier and strangely suspicious of all you have to say.

Some parents still quote the old error that goes, "I don't want to indoctrinate my children. When they're older, they'll make up their own minds." This means that you don't have to teach them anything. You can sleep in on Sunday. And you leave to them the towering task of finding out what's true as they stumble through life without a map.

I've learned this first-hand. You don't get a do-over on this one. Better go start the car.

What do we tell our daughters

As it is, man has sufficiently degraded woman for his lust, and [contraception], no matter how well meaning the advocates may be, will still further degrade her. --Mohandas Gandhi

The statement by Gandhi certainly will strike most people as dramatic, and many as just plain wrong. After all, in 2009 we have as a culture embraced contraception for both married and unmarried people for half a century. In fact, most people in developed nations take it for granted that we have the ability to control whether we have a child or not, for the most part.

But some are still questioning the benefits of artificial contraception. Some others dare to condemn it. Why would they do that? Surely if we had less contraception we would have more unwanted babies, whose lives would no doubt be hardly worth living; and we would have more abortions, right?

Visionaries like Gandhi, Teddy Roosevelt, T.S. Eliot, and a succession of Popes saw where contraception would take society. Even early feminists of the 19th century condemned it as a way of further degrading women, allowing men to indulge their desires without responsibility toward their partner. It was predicted that marriage would be weakened, adultery would rise, pre-marital sex would be commonplace, and society would not only begin to crumble but would slowly commit suicide.

A look at our world today proves these thinkers were on to something. The birthrate in most European countries is far below the replacement rate. They are dying off. The U.S. is right behind. Divorce is ubiquitous. Fatherless children abound. Abortion, rather than becoming less common with the availability of contraception, trends upward right along with use of the pill and other preventives. Because it's all about our attitude toward sex and new life. Once we uncouple those things that God linked together, distressing trends emerge.

This is food for thought. It's worth pondering what we tell our daughters and our sons about how big a picture we are actually part of, and how what we do as an individual or a couple affects the whole tide of society.

The idea of eschewing artificial contraception may seem "way out there." But what the free thinker's bumper sticker used to say still holds: Question everything. What was conventional wisdom has become a radical proposition. Could it actually be true?
____
Many thanks to Christopher West and his book Good News About Sex & Marriage.

Small stores, big benefits

Increasingly, the trend moves back toward time-consuming foraging behavior, as each of us is forced to sift for ourselves through more and more options in almost every aspect of life.--Barry Schwartz, The Paradox of Choice

I heard the story once of a Russian immigrant who came to the United States some twenty years ago and was taken by a friend to one of our typical suburban supermarkets. The Russian, in the very first aisle, became paralyzed as he stared at the overwhelming quantity of merchandise and the endless choices he must make.

I feel like that man. While many of my friends love mammoth retailers such as Sam's Club for the dizzying breadth of products they contain, I don't do well in those stores. When I enter their cavernous interiors, a feeling of intimidation overtakes me. Where do I begin? How will I choose? How will I exit without spending three times what I meant to?

Small stores are the thing for me. If my small neighborhood grocery store does not have it, I might not need it after all. I can make one trip every couple of months to the Big Store to stock up on any exotic items I must have. And small stores have many benefits:
--I know the clerks. We talk. They know my children and always ask about them.
--I usually run into people I know and we catch up on things.
--These stores are close to home. I can walk for small things. For a big load I bring the car but expend very little gasoline.
--If you frequent small stores, you know them by heart. It takes no time at all to seize what you need and get on your way.
--There's less to choose from. You spend less time standing in the aisle deciding.
--There's less to buy that you did not intend to buy. No big tantalizing displays of patio furniture or camera phones.
--It's harder to lose your children in a small store, and if you do, someone there probably knows who he belongs to and comes to find you.

Shopping in independent stores brings extra benefits. They are more invested in your neighborhood and city than the chains are. A project is afoot to promote keeping our smaller, brick-and-mortar merchants alive in these times; it's called the 3/50 project. It calls for picking three independent stores you'd miss if they were gone and spending about $50 per month among them, total. Check it out here: http://www.the350project.net/home.html.

And sure, small stores charge a little more than the huge ones. But you'll buy less and will probably find, as I do, that your weekly receipt is no larger (and is probably smaller) than if you drove over to Big Buy and spent your time with them. Why not give it a whirl?