Peeling the Onion: A New Encounter

To borrow a line from the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, "Haaaaaaaaaaave you met Ted?"

Ted Ramsey is a newer edition to the Wild Hare family, and I've had the pleasure of getting to know him over the past couple of months.  He's a vivacious, pleasant young man who is quick to smile and quick to engage with other people, but I didn't really get to know this young man until I sat down with him over a beer after work the other night.

It is so easy to assume that you know people from the sparse interactions you may have with them throughout a day.  You work side by side with them, so you think you have an idea of who they are and what they are about.  I have to tell you that Ted was one of those surprises that caught me completely unaware.

Let's start with what I thought about Ted in the beginning.  He seemed nice, charming, and good for a laugh.  I thought him young, fresh, just out of college, and, while smart, maybe not that worldly in his experience in life.  I was wrong.

When Ted and I sat down to have a beer together, it became quickly obvious that this was a young man with potential! He had a diverse range of interests and a lot of experience for one his age.  For example, Ted worked as a singer on a cruise ship for a year.  He worked for years in Washington D.C. on public policy issues, aaaaaaaaaaaand there is this:

Ted was a part of the University of Oregon a capella group "On The Rocks" that was featured on NBC's Sing Off a couple of years back.

It's amazing what happens when you put your assumptions aside and actually engage others in conversation.  I had an overly simplistic view of this young man in my head, and I'm glad I got the opportunity to be corrected.  Stereotyping and snap judgments are easy to do, especially as we get older and feel like we "know" more, but I was glad to be wrong in this case as I got to better know a nice young man who I might have overlooked if I kept my blinders on.

Plus, and you know this is true, I just wanted to post that Youtube video and see if I couldn't get people to embarrass Ted at work.

Homework: Act Like a Lady...Think Like a Boss

When I picked Shea up from school today, we set off for home and had our daily small talk.  We covered our usual topics of school, play, her friends, etc.  We then set the agenda for the day.  We were going to go to the store and then return home for homework.  We agreed that both of us were going to do our homework.  She had a composition to write, and, guess what?  So did I.

I had to do my own daily homework of writing, and we agreed to do it together.  I hadn't planned on sitting down to write, but an opportunity presented itself, and I decided to take it.  Thus, you find me here in the blogosphere brainstorming on what to write.  This can oftentimes be the hardest part for a writer, discovering your subject, but today was easy as I latched on to a small detail from my drive to pick up Shea.

On the way to the school, I was behind a car with the bumper sticker, "Act Like a Lady...Think Like a Boss."  My first reaction was, "Right on, sister."  Then I stuttered a moment and had to rethink my original idea.  I wasn't sure if I liked the "Act like a lady" part.  I decided this would be a great chance for Shea and I to have a talk about it, to pick her brain and see what she thought about what it meant to "act like a lady."

After our initial small talk, I told her about the bumper sticker I saw and asked her what she thought.  Her first answer, "Good."  I had to press her a little bit to see where she truly stood.  I followed up with, "What is a boss?"

"Someone who tells other people what to do.  Like at work or a teacher."

"Is that different from being a lady?" I asked.

She had to think hard on this one.  "Yes," she said.  "Ladies are nice."

"Is it mean to tell someone what to do if you are in charge?" I asked.

"No," Shea said after a moment.

"So a lady can be in charge and tell people what to do, right?"

"Yeah," Shea said her voice rising in excitement.  She was on board with this whole train of thought.

"So...if ladies are supposed to be nice, then what other types of things are ladies supposed to be?" I continued.  I even air quoted the "supposed" to emphasize the point.

Shea struggled with this one, so I changed my line of questioning.  "Is there anything a lady is not?"

In my college lectures, I always tell my students that it is easier to say what they are not than to actually say what they are, so I took this tact with Shea.

Shea came back with, "Boys can lift heavy stuff."

"OK," I said, "But how often do you practice lifting heavy things?"

"Not a lot," she said.

"So what would happen if you practiced lifting heavy things?  Would you get better at it? Would you eventually be able to lift heavier and heavier things?"

"Yes," she said.

"OK," I said, "so are there girls who can lift heavy things?  Girls who work hard at being strong?"

"Yes," she said.

"So would you say that girls are strong?"

"Yes," Shea said, again her voice rose at the idea.

"So it's not just boys, is it?"

"Nope," she said.  She even had a hint of a giggle in her voice.

"So, let's run through some words and you tell me if it describes girls."

"Okay," Shea said through her smile.  She's used to me by now, and she knows my little word games with her.

"Strong."

"Yep," she said.  I lobbed the ball to her on that one.

"Smart."

"Yep," she said.

"Funny."

"Yep," she said.

"Pretty."

"Yep," she said.

"Powerful."

She took a moment on this one.  She asked me what the word meant.  I told her that being powerful meant that you could do things on your own, that you commanded respect from others, and that you were able to do things on your own without help.

"Yep," she said.

I reached across the car and gave her a high five.  "Sounds right to me," I said.  This girl makes me proud.  She has a natural sense of her own power, but I'm always careful to have conversations with her that reminds her of it.  In all my time as a college instructor, I saw so many young women who had lost a sense of their own power and were slowly reclaiming it through the process of a self-guided education, but it makes me wonder at how spectacular they would be if they simply didn't have to go through that culturally indoctrinated period of self-doubt.  As a parent, I know some of it will happen, but I hope to be an advocate of my daughter's own self-worth throughout her lifetime,  to maybe soften some of the trappings of adolescence.

It was a wonderful conversation, and one that I hope she remembers and takes to heart.  If she doesn't remember, then maybe she will one day read this and either remember or be reminded of how her daddy sees her.  When we got home from our errands, my daughter and I sat at the kitchen table together.  She did her school work and I got the chance to reflect on my day with her.  These moments are small moments, the moments that make up a life, and a good life at that.  I hope to spend many more hours working with her like this, showing her that writing, thinking, and questioning are all a part of how we navigate the complexity of life.

All in all, not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

This Is How I Love You

It has been a long time since I've posted on my blog.  I've been undergoing a phase of personal transformation, and I didn't feel steady enough to post here, but recently my mind has turned more and more to the blog.  Today, my mind locked on an idea that I finally felt compelled to bring to the page.  Here goes...

I've been making a lot of changes in my life recently.  Examining the way I identify myself, making career moves, and trying to become more present in my life in real ways.  As I was working around the house this afternoon, my mind drifted back to a story I wrote during grad school at Pacific University.  It was titled "The Little Things" and it was one of the most personal stories I wrote during that phase of my life.  It was also the story that taught me the most about who I was, who I wanted to be, and how I wanted to live my life.  As I was elbow deep in dirty toilets today, I thought back to the things I learned in writing that story.  And this is what I thought about as I scrubbed away.

Recently, I created this chalkboard for myself.

Self-imposed chalkboard chores

I don't know why the idea came to me in this particular form, but I know that the idea came from the feeling that I was somehow disconnected from my own home, from my family.  I've recently taken a position that requires me to work nights, a situation that removes me from the evening escapades of my family, and I was feeling like I wasn't present when my family was in the home.  I couldn't miss work, so I had to find another way to participate in my family's life.  This was one small answer to that nagging feeling.

In a marriage, in a family, there are all kinds of compromises that must be made, all kinds of sacrifices that must be made in order to keep the family unit afloat, but that doesn't mean that I had to be absent, or inactive, in my family's life.  The chalkboard chore board gave me an opportunity to feel like I had contributed to my family in a real way.  It allowed me to be of assistance to my loved ones, even if I couldn't do so by being physically present in the room.

My chores are an expression of my love.  My contribution to the household is a way of leaving a love letter every day that shows my family that I love them and want to help them navigate their busy modern lives.  My love may not be present in a hug or a kiss at bedtime, but my love is the scaffolding that holds up the structures that enable them to be successful in their lives.  Each of these things are small, minuscule efforts, things that can be done in short periods of time, but they still are what they are...they are expressions of my love for my family.  They are a statement that says I am there for them in all the ways that I can, even if some of those ways are "invisible."

I don't like the fact that I barely get to see them these days, but I will make every effort to make sure that I am a presence in their life in all the "little" ways that I can.  It sometimes takes a little swallowing of pride, a little mental coercion to get myself to play "Suzy Homemaker," but when I am done at the end of the day, when I've taken a chore off my spouse's plate, or prepared the home to receive my daughter, I feel like a man.