Where is God?

I’ve been teaching the boys’ Wednesday night Bible class for almost a year now. The kids’ ages range from about two to six, so when everyone is there, the levels at which information is processed is pretty broad.

Most of our lessons are of the classic stories and characters of the Bible, and the lessons they teach are kept pretty simple. However, several weeks ago, we started a unit on the life of Jesus, and I must say, it has caught the kids’ attention.

As a parent, I’ve strayed away from discussions about death and dying simply because I’ve wanted to shelter my boys from that concept. Biblically speaking, death is a reward, but to a three year old…not so much.

When our dog, Shelby, died last year, the boys were almost two and three. I didn’t have the heart or the wherewithal to explain to them the “cycle of life” at that point in theirs, so I simply told them that “She went away.” It seemed to suffice.
Just yesterday, the boys ran inside screaming that there was a dead bird in the yard “with ants and flies crawling all over it!” How a little time changes everything. I braced myself for the barrage of questions.

I know, it’s probably pathetic. Especially to those raised on a farm where it seems the process of life and death manifests itself more clearly and the knowledge of its importance is more essential. But I’m no farm girl. Just doing the best I know how for my boys.

It was after a lesson on Jesus’ death that the questions started rolling in. “Why did Jesus die?” “Where is he now?” “Where is God?”

These were all pretty simple to answer. It’s not the questions that I’m worried about, it’s their capability for understanding the implications of the answers. After all, it won’t take a thoughtful kid long to make the deduction “Jesus died. My dog died. What (Or who) is next?”

But here’s what I discovered: Just stick to the facts, and the facts will stick to the kids. I had a mom tell me last Sunday that her three year old daughter informed her quite nonchalantly that “Jesus came back from the dead”. It didn’t seem to matter how or even why. At least not yet.

During a sermon from the preacher on Jesus a few weeks ago, Brisco stood up and said (rather, yelled) into my ear that “Jesus died on a cross-walk”. Well, at least he’s trying.

I guess I’ve discovered that children can handle most any truth that we choose to give them. They have a way of taking it all in, deliberating the facts and assimilating it into it’s effect on their world.

Cooper is definitely our more pensive child. Maybe because he’s older, but he is quite interested in what Jesus is doing and when he can see him and “Why did God decide to ‘put out’ that ole Debil anyway?”

He deliberates ideas such as the location of heaven and just how high it is and what in the world could they be doing up there?

Brisco asked me a few days ago when we would be going to heaven. Like it was a venue on our summer vacation. Cooper was quizzing me a while back about something that I was evidently having a hard time explaining and I finally just said, “Cooper, you’re just gonna have to trust me on this.” To my surprise, he began singing “Trust and Obey”. (Cue the sappy, mommy smile.) Of course when I asked him if he knew what those words meant, he smiled and said, “Nope”.

I guess the hard questions are bound to start rolling in. I mean, how long can we be satisfied with topics of discussion about colors and letters and numbers. It’s the meat of life that makes it worth living, and there’s no hungrier subject than a child. They are little sponges waiting to absorb whatever we put in front of them.

“Where is God?”
“Well, Cooper, God is in heaven. But if you look around, you can see that He’s right here with us too.”

And that’s All in a day’s work!

Easter Sunday~2009

Life according to Scooby

Scooby Doo was always one of my favorite cartoons, so when the boys-especially Cooper-became interested in watching those meddling kids in the Mystery Machine, I was thrilled. They share a love for Tom and Jerry with their dad (or as they call it, “Cat and Mouse”), but for me, it was always Scooby.

Now days, the show isn’t one of the regularly scheduled programs on the modern kids’ channels. We have to catch it on Boomerang, the classic cartoon network, or TV Land, another hot spot for old-timers-something I’ve evidently become over night. So sometimes I’ll find myself scrolling through the TV guide to find a cartoon about a bunch of teenagers who make nonstop road trips in a 1968 hippy-style Chevy van that never seems to run out of gas. The things we do for our kids.

It’s funny to think of it now, but one of Cooper’s nicknames from early on was Scooby. From Cooper to Scooper to Scooby, it was just the natural rhyme and rhythm of the name game you play with your little ones before they learn to walk or talk or talk back.

As I stood at the sink on Tuesday with my hands in the soapy water, wondering just what I’d write about this week, my now not-so-little ones were enjoying a creative lunch I’d concocted from the few healthy ingredients I could find in the kitchen: a quarter pound of hamburger, a stalk of broccoli and a box of Velveeta cheese. De-lish.

As I took to my task, Brisco turned around from his chair at the table and said, “Mom, did you know Scooby Doo had a mom and a dad?”

Well, I must say, I have contemplated many odd and interesting things in my few short years as a parent, but the paternity of one “Scooby Doo” has never crossed my mind. But I’ve learned just to go with these little-boy moments of insight into life and ponder right along with them the world’s bigger questions. So I simply replied, “Really? Yes, he did have a mom and a dad, didn’t he?” So then he added, “Yeah, and Shaggy had a mom and a dad too.”

I decided to push the idea further, “And what about the rest of them?”

Suddenly, Cooper’s thought process took over the conversation. “Well, you see,” he explained all grown up and to the point, “Daphne is the mom,” and he licked the Ranch dressing from his spoon.

And to this I responded, “Really? Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he said as he took a bite of his cheese-covered concoction. Then he added, “And Freddy is the dad.”

I smiled a little at the thought that a four-year old might be so capable of reading between the lines. It wasn’t a conversation I’d seen coming, but I was intrigued. I found that I wanted more information about their new take on this old show.

“Hmm. Well, why is Freddy the dad? What does that mean?” I thought maybe it was because he’s the one always driving the van. But it seems that has little to do with it. “It means he cooks,” Cooper said as he gulped down his milk.

I was torn as to how this might reflect the roles in our home. Dad=cooking because he has seen his daddy cook? Or dad=cooking because he would rather his daddy cook? I wasn’t sure what to think of this apparent role reversal of his. It is good for the kid to see a man in the kitchen, yes? But then just where is it that he sees his mother?

So I decided that before I got too worried about the implications of his statement, I would probe a little further. “Ok, so what about Velma?” I questioned. “What does she do?”

And to this my little genius replied, “She’s the one with all the good ideas.” Ahh. Now that’s more like it.

As the boys finished their lunch, a meal made of nothing but three ingredients and a good idea, I thought about how five minutes of chit-chat and a 40 year old cartoon could be so entertaining and yet so insightful. I suppose it’s a kind of irony that the roles in our family could be so simplified and likened to the main characters of a old-time cartoon.

I knew there was a reason I continued to love old Scoob all these years. I believe I could get used to this version of reality. Dad in the kitchen. “Velma”, blissfully pondering all of her wonderful ideas. Life according to Scooby. “Zoinks!”

And that’s All in a day’s work!

How you know you’re raising boys

If ever you have wondered how you get yourself covered in the messiness of life, chances are, your kids are to blame. I know mine are. There are some things in life that just don’t happen to you unless you have kids. And I’ve discovered that seeing double is twice the trouble, at least when it comes to little boys. Following is a mere week’s worth of items on a long list of antics showing just how it is a parent can be certain they’re raising boys.

You find yourself swimming in baseballs with a three year old shoving a green crayon in your face telling you to write “S-M-T-I-H” on every one of them.

The other half of your family rushes in the door from a trip to the dump, ecstatic to show you their discovery: ARMLOADS of HUGE dinosaur bones. Translation: skeletons from an entire family of dead cows.

You walk in the bathroom to find two sets of bare buns hovering around the same bowl and when you ask (ignorantly) what’s going on they say, “We’re doin’ a double!”

After a long talk about being responsible with their toys and taking care of their things, you find a handful of broken crayons hidden in the toe of daddy’s house shoe.

Helpful bathroom hints get lost in translation in the mind of a three year old, like this one: “When I sit to pee, Grandmother says my weenie has to touch the water.”

You notice a gradually increasing stench rising from the innards of your car. You chalk it up to a neighborhood with too many cats, but when you finally clean out the trunk three weeks after Easter you find two baskets full of fake green grass…and a half dozen eggs.

Give ‘em a bat, a ball, their dad, and a couple of kids from next door and their own backyard is the best place in the world to be.

Your oldest, a brave (but foolish) four year old, has no qualms telling you your spankings don’t hurt.

You are out of Kleenex, so you tell your child to use a piece of toilet paper out of the bathroom only to find, the next time you go to the restroom, that the used piece of toilet paper is still attached to the roll.

You somehow slip into a state of mind hovering somewhere between Super-human and Mommy-masochist when you decide to have a fun-filled afternoon of arts and crafts beginning…and ending…with a lesson on paper mache.

Every day begins with baseballs, gloves, and two little boys striking out the entire line-up of the Boston Dirty Sox, all in the middle of your living room.

To help you deal with the stress of spending 14-hour days alone with two little boys, you find you’ve developed an unhealthy addiction to Charm’s Blow Pops.

To keep your children from stealing abandoned shopping carts and filling their pockets with bubble gum in the grocery store checkout line, you’re willing to give them the last of your emergency stash of blow pops.

You can’t find your purse, so you decide to ask the kids for help, and the little guy just happens to know it’s in the back of his closet under pounds of shoes, clothes and toys. Probably scavenging for more blow pops.

Out of the blue one day it suddenly hits you that you should have invested in Spray ‘n Wash rather than starting a college fund.

If one were a fly on the wall of your home, one might hear comments from your children such as this:
“Mom, I’m hungry.” (after consuming exactly half a large pizza)
“Mom, I want gummy bears for breakfast.”
“I have practice today?! Awesome!”
“Mom, my weenie’s too big.”

If one were a fly on the wall of your home, one might hear comments from you such as this:
“Any game that involves pulling your pants down, is NOT a good idea.”
“Any game that involves putting random items into your pants is NOT a good idea.”
“Any competition that begins with ‘Come look in here’ as one is in the process of opening the front of his pants is NOT a good idea.”
“Boys! Why is there macaroni in the living room floor?!”

If you can empathize with three or more items from this list-or others just like them-chances are, you too are raising little boys.

And that’s All in a day’s work!

What does it mean to be a parent?

Before we become parents, we all have associations in our minds as to what it means to enter parenthood. Good or bad, we place ourselves within a mental framework and give new meaning to what the 18+ years following the birth of our first child will be like.

There are a million and one circumstances that are true, legitimate fears for first time parents. Forget all that. Forget the health concerns and social ills of our day. Forget preparing our children for moral dilemmas and teaching them to make ethical choices so they don’t have to grow up to be grown-ups with regrets. Forget adolescence and first loves and zits. Forget it all. Those were not even thoughts in my pea-sized brain. For the longest time, all I can remember being worried about was the fact that I just didn’t want to lose any sleep. Wow. No wonder my world overwhelms me.

Of course after we bring our children home for the first time, we actually get a glimpse at what this parenting business is all about. So helpless, wrapped in a blanket and lying in a crib-that is if we’re brave enough to lay them down at all. Can’t eat. Can’t move. Can’t speak. Every element of their existence depends upon the job we do as their parents.

How will we ever interpret those cries? Those looks they get on their faces as their cheeks turn red and they furrow their brow. Though it seems we will never be good at this gig, we soon come to realize that there is really no one who knows our children better than do we. Mom is good at bathing and feeding and singing him to sleep. Dad can get him to burp like a Russian sailor and to stop crying when nothing else will do the trick. Maybe we’re getting the hang of this parenting thing after all.

And just as we start to feel comfortable with the stage we are in, they grow out of it and give us a whole new set of symptoms, a completely new collection of concerns. Why does he cry every night at nine? When will he sleep from dusk until dawn? Can’t we just give this kid table food already? And on and on we go.

But time passes quickly. We’re celebrating birthdays and holidays and the changing of the seasons. Then one day, we look up, and it’s time to enroll them for their first day of school.

Cooper was ready to go to school the moment he turned four…last October, in the middle of the semester. I explained that he had to wait until the new school year began, and when the day arrived to go visit his new classroom, he went willingly, excitedly, and hid behind my leg for the first 15 minutes.

These are the days that a parent knows will come, and still, when they do, we seem surprised. Surprised that our oldest child, just born yesterday, is old enough to start school. Surprised that he will be spending five days a week with children we don’t even know. Surprised that it is the beginning of a life of school bells and schedules and activities, most of which don’t include his mother. Surprised that I am so ill-prepared to send my baby off into the world, that I’d actually consider home schooling. Well, I said consider.

And as it happens, only two short days later, the decision was made to enter the world of Little League. A ball player from the beginning, the legendary Hall of Fame as his namesake and the Yankees in his blood, it is unbelievably time for the challenge and excitement of organized sport. Not backyard ball with mom and dad. Not hit it till you like where it lands. Not run from home to home every time you hit the ball, but competitive, score keeping, don’t pass the runner in front of you, tag up on a fly ball, what in the world does a force mean-baseball, with an adult pitching, of course. The love is there. The competitive drive is in high gear. So here we go. Just one step further into this crazy world of parenting.

I know things won’t slow down from here. We’ll be singing in music programs and running in track meets and filling our walls with artwork that a mom just can’t bear to throw away. We’ll squabble over homework and doing chores and always having to let the little brother tag along. We’ll endure algebra and Aristotle and the onset of adolescence. And we’ll figure it all out together.


I no longer worry about missing a little sleep at night. I’ve got more pressing events to plan for and more important people to tend to. I read; I play; I build. I kiss; I hug; I laugh. I insist; I beg; I plead, and yes, sometimes I yell. But I’ve learned that being a parent doesn’t mean always being prepared for what these kids of ours throw at me. It just means making an unbelievable, get dirty, sacrifice-the-body, do-it-for-the-team, diving attempt--no matter where I end up landing.

And that’s All in a day’s work!

Sounds of the Game

As we waited for the final game of the District Tournament to begin, Cooper sat on my lap, watching his dad hitting in-field to “his boys”. The sounds of the game were all around: music on the loudspeaker; fans in the stands; players shouting, “Right!” “Left!” “Cut!” But the sound that stood out the most to my intense and attentive four-year old son was the sound of the baseball against his daddy’s bat.

“Watch Daddy out there,” I said to my son. “See how he knows just where to hit the ball?” I could tell he was watching, taking it all deep within. “I like the sound of the ball on Daddy’s bat,” he said with all earnest and intrigue. “It sounds different than when the boys hit it,” he observed.

“That’s because it’s a special kind of bat. It’s called a fungo, and it’s made of wood,” I explained. “What time will I get to swing that bat?” he asked with eager anticipation. “Maybe when you get a little bigger,” I promised. “It’s an awfully big bat.”

As the game began, my boy sat at my side focused on the plays before him. He kept track of each run and knew exactly which team was winning at all times. I’ve never seen a kid so enthused about a game he’s never “officially” gotten to play. He knows when the player makes it safely on base, and he knows when he’s been thrown out. And when the umpire makes a call he doesn’t understand, he’ll ask, “Why did he call him out, Momma?” I give him the only answer I can think of that doesn’t paint the official as always the villain, “Well, I guess he just didn’t see it the way we did, Buddy.”

He understands a run-down, but doesn’t like to call it “a pickle”. Figurative language is still a head-scratcher for a just four and a half year old. He likes to watch the base runners take their lead and slide, head first, safely back into the base. He spends hours of his “off season” duplicating their every attempt.

Practice, to him, is pure joy. No amount of running the bases, fielding grounders or sliding into home could ever be considered hard labor. He understands the axiom, “Practice Makes Perfect” and lives it to it’s fullest.

He may be just a little guy, but he’s all baseball, and all fan. To him, like so many of us, there’s just nothing like a hard fastball coming across the plate, or a hanging curveball that one of his “Daddy’s boys” sends crashing out of the park, “Yeeeeaahhhh! Home Run, Momma!!” And a hive five to top it off.

He seems to understand the beauty of a long, hard, well-placed line drive into the outfield, and asks questions I’ve never heard from a preschooler. “Why didn’t that boy tag up, Momma?” or “Man! He scored all the way from first base!”

He’s doing his best to understand the strike zone, but like so many of the greats, he still finds it hard to lay off the high ones. “Two strikes now, Momma, right?” he will ask, calling for a grown-up confirmation of his newly-learned observation.

He’s discovered that there is an end to this game, this obsession he has come by so honestly. “There are three big tournaments at the end of the year. Our goal is to try and win them all,” I tell him with all hope and expectation. He seems to have some kind of grasp of that idea, but more times than not, he’ll just take it as it comes. “Is today a game day?” he’ll ask in all eagerness. And so the day begins.

On a good day at the ballpark, these are the sounds of my game. Questions asked by a boy falling in love.

As I look at my children, I see a passion for this sport that can only be explained by genetics. From mom and dad, to aunts, uncles, grandparents and cousins, there’s just something about this game made for kids that sticks with us long past childhood. It makes us yell like madmen when the ump blows a call. Makes us pump our fists with satisfaction at a strike out that ends the inning, and makes us whoop and holler in unadulterated bliss at a ball sailing over the outfield wall.

As the first baseman fielded his last slow roller and we prepared for the game to begin, I whispered to the ballplayer on my knee: “You remember that sound you hear,” I said. “Remember how it makes you feel inside when you hear the ball crack off that black, wooden bat. Remember it’s your daddy out there.” I urged. “Remember, and whenever you hear it-no matter where you are-it will always feel like home.”

And that’s All in a day’s work!

Something about an overnighter

It always takes us several days it seems to get back to reality after a trip away from home. There’s just something about an overnighter that inhibits the hearing, alters the attitude, and transforms the conduct of little boys under five. Our recent Easter weekend was no different.

We had a great time visiting and playing with friends and family that we hadn’t seen in a while, but it never fails that by the time we get back home, something inside them has snapped, and it apparently takes an act of Nature to turn things around.

It began on Monday with the nagging and whining and profound loss of hearing. It seems the oldest had learned to torture his brother and the younger had been stripped of all auditory capacity…overnight phenomena. From Cooper’s punching and growling to the point of tears to Brisco’s blatant ignoring of my every request, if I thought they could have survived out doors all night, I’d have tossed them a pillow and locked the door behind me. I opted for a more positive alternative, telling myself that surely tomorrow would be a better day.

As better days go, I’d say Tuesday probably didn’t qualify. From the moment they rolled out of bed, they were aggravating, annoying and antagonizing one another beyond reason. They had forgotten how to share, refused to work as a team, and had taken sides against one another, living out their new childhood motto, “Every Smith for Himself”. I must have died and gone to live with the Willy Wonka rejects-the absolute brattiest kids on earth.

But as the wind warmed and the sun emerged, one thought gave me a glimmer of hope: Send those boys outside. So I did. But just as I began to feel the peaceful calm for which I had so desperately been longing…that is when the real storm rolled in.

As I sat in the living room folding yet another load of dingy socks, I heard the back door open. I met the oldest as he walked in, shoes in hand. He sat down on the floor and asked me to put his shoes back on his feet, but as he did, a strange aroma wafted into my air space. Something must have given him a little nudge, because the look on his face and the words he then spoke were not ones that were easily said nor received. He looked at me with those big round eyes and said, “Uh, Mommy, I, uh, I…I had an accident.”

The next words I spoke were more ignorant than informative when, from somewhere outside my body I heard myself say, “An accident? In your pants!?!” Like there is any other kind.

For the next half hour, I was in a world of disbelief as I put one boy in the shower, only to see the other one trotting in the house soon after with the same, sly little grin. “What, you too?!!!” was all I could manage to say. And after cleaning and dressing them both yet again, the little one just couldn’t resist. “Hey, Mom! Wanna see where I pooped outside?”

I only remember random moments of time after that. Brisco was proud of the fact that he’d managed to squeeze between two buildings outside. He was also more than happy to show me where Cooper had unloaded, and demonstrate how he’d wiped his bottom on the side of the dog house. Cooper, on the other hand, had sense enough to hide.

As I sat dumbfounded at the ridiculousness of the scenario I was facing, I had not a single coherent thought in my mind but one: Call Randy. I decided a short email would suffice, and this is precisely how it read.
Attn: Mr. Smith: “Your sons just pooped outside and all over themselves. Do you mind if I kill them?” His response, so simple, yet so perfectly astute: “Cold water hose.” Now why didn’t I think of that?

The remainder of the week was filled with a variety of incidents from pulling Cooper out of the water meter in the front yard to picking acoustic out of their bed at night. We had science lessons on why one should not pick every green leaf and flower off the probably now-dead bush outside and lectures on relieving one’s self in public. We even had a real-life example of why Mommy says only one vitamin C per child per day.

We took belts to ball games and belts to church. We prayed for wisdom and self control, morning, noon and night. We perfected the disciplinary arts of time out, privilege restriction and going to bed early. And just about the time I thought we had things straightened out, I entered the bathroom Sunday night and discovered that Brisco had dumped the entire contents of every bottle he could reach straight into their bath water. I could barely see my children through the giant mound of bubbles.

It was truly one of those moments where I just had to get away. And as I stood outside the bathroom door trying to gather myself to re-enter, I listened to Cooper scolding his brother and preparing him for what lay ahead. “I can’t believe you dumped every bottle,” he said. “Mommy is really going to spank you this time.” And the little bubble-head simply replied, “Oh, Man!”

I couldn’t help but give up a little smile. It was the first time in seven whole days that my kids sounded normal.

I’m hoping against all odds that the week to come is less eventful than the last. I still haven’t quite figured out why these kids lose their minds after being away from home. But at our house, at least, it’s a fact: There’s just something about an overnighter that seems to do the trick.

And that’s All in a day’s work!