I have spent the last few months trying to soak in every second I have with my kids. The video camera has been attached to the end of my arm as if it were a God-given appendage. I have poured over the footage like a madman, soaking in every laugh, every knock knock joke and every choreographed dance performed in the living room.
It's not that we have done anything noteworthy these last few months that has caused my crazed state of recording. No, in fact we have hung out around the house, eaten grilled cheese sandwiches and played Mancala. There have been no stamps on our passports from far off lands or exotic locations. But it is just these seemingly mundane activities that I want to capture on film. It's the burping contests, thumb wars and laughing until the Diet Coke you are drinking sprays through your nose that make up the marrow of a fulfilled and meaningful family life. These moments are fleeting and hide themselves under the guise of being routine and commonplace.
Sometime ago I watched a movie made by the philosopher and theologian Adam Sandler (scanning for sarcasm) called Click. Sandler's character in the movie is an egotistical, self centered father that stumbles upon a remote control that allows him to fast forward through what he feels are the unimportant and ordinary moments in life. He soon learns that because of his eagerness to fast forward to the good parts of his life, he missed OUT on his life.
It is the microwaveable, fast-food culture that we have created for ourselves that conditions us to always be looking forward to what is "next". Each experience of life is just enough to sustain us until we can experience the next experience in life. And that NEXT experience, buddy, is going to be amazing! We make our lives busy looking for that one tangible thing that will fill the hole.
Losing my dad five years ago was one of the most difficult things I have had to go through but it could have been worse. You see, my dad got it. He wasn't perfect but he was good enough to realize that this life was cursory and he lived it as such. He left everything on the field, so to speak. I remember finding a tape recording that he had made describing his childhood. He talked about the pond that he and his brothers used to swim in and how his formative years could have been taken out of a Huck Finn novel. It is my deepest regret that I never asked him more about this recording and gave him the opportunity to expound on it. At 15 years old I knew he would live forever and I could ask him about it later. Because I could ask him later, there was no sense keeping a copy of a minute long recording. Little did I know that 15 years later I would pay any sum of money for that 60 seconds of my dad's voice.
The thing that made him so unique from so many men in my life is that I always knew where I stood with him, for better or worse because he looked me in the eye, and he told me. Had he been too busy or too timid to speak openly, I would spend the rest of my life wondering if I measured up in his eyes. I am convinced that this is the most prominent and important question a boy asks his father, either consciously or unconsciously. If and how that question gets answered is the most integral part of their development.
It is this question that sends a man without the presence of God in his life into a workaholic frenzy in an attempt answer the question himself by attaining wealth, power and control. It is this man that may eventually settle for material trappings, sexual indulgences or just crawl into a bottle of liquor and never come out.
For girls it is a different question but same consequences. A little girl needs to know from her father that she is valuable. She needs her father to take time the time to show her her worth in his eyes. If she does not feel the security of how valuable she is in her father's eyes, she too could spend her life desperately seeking to fill this void left by her inattentive father. It is like she is yelling into the mouth of an empty cave but expecting to hear someone else's voice answering back. She may turn to alcohol or drugs, or find a man that she feels compliments her value as a woman, however high or low she perceives that value to be. The lower the value she perceives, the more likely she is to run back into the arms of a man that repeatedly abuses her. "This is all I am worth", she says to herself.
I cannot bear the thought of these questions going unanswered in the minds of my children. The stakes are too high for me not to stop what I am doing and let the girls attempt to put rollers in what little hair I have. Will is only going to be mesmerized by every airplane, motorcycle or loud noise for so long. There will come a day, although far off in the future, that I will not be able to beat Logan in a head-to-head wrestling match.
There will be days that I will be tired and irritable. There will be days that I will be too busy, too hungry or too sick to take the time to speak into there lives. But these days will be the exception, not the rule.
Henry David Thoreau said it best. "It is not enough to be busy; so too are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?" I want to be busy about being a steward of the gifts I have been given.
So if you will excuse me, I have a pedicure at Salon Karleigh in 5 minutes and she charges me an extra Oreo if I am late.
