Laughed Until We Cried (HoL 13)

So a couple of days before Christmas, our pastor Michael asks if I could recap the year for our casual Christmas morning service. I presented the following as a “Meditation” called laughing all the way. This is a much shorter version than the original. I also presented it in my pajamas and
bathrobe, but that’s another story.

We had a great Christmas, and I hope you did as well.

Laughing all the Way.

Laughing All the Way

Our story begins and ends in the same place, in a swirl of frantic chaos. Like so many great stories throughout history, our story begins and ends at Wal-Mart. It was cold and late. Nancy and I had both been in bed in our pajamas ten minutes earlier, but now we were both running across a nearly empty parking lot towards the main entrance of Wal-Mart hoping to get in before the store closed.

Nancy hadn’t been feeling well earlier that day, and just as we were settling down to go to bed, I half jokingly suggested that she should take a pregnancy test. It’s amazing how much fuss can be stirred up over a little blue line.

It was obvious that neither of us was going to sleep that night anyway,and being rational creatures, we wanted to make sure that our experiment was reproducible (No pun intended), so we threw on some shoes and sped to Wal-mart and searched frantically for pregnancy tests. Pregnancy tests don’t come cheap, but it’s not the sort of thing you want to leave up to the “Sam’s choice” brand. With less than five minutes until the store closed, we bought three different brands of pregnancy tests…..all yielded the same results. We were going to have a baby.

Nancy and I relished our secret for weeks. We waited until we went down to Florida for Christmas to tell our folks. We revealed our good news to our family by giving framed ultrasound pictures as Christmas presents. Our nieces were sleeping in their rooms when Santa delivered their presents last year. I had never been a grown up at a house when Santa came, and although it was very cool to see Santa deliver the presents, it was the next morning when the girls woke up that I knew that this parenting thing definitely had some cool perks. 2 ½ year-old Cassidy was hard to wake up, but when she did, she knew something was different mabout that particular morning.

Our time in Florida last year was short and sweet. When we returned to North Carolina, we became a little overwhelmed, and decided that the time had come to get our friends involved. We leaked our news slowly at first to just a few close friends, but after a few days, it was no longer a secret.

Nancy and I planned and dreamed for months. We puzzled over names. We wanted a name that would be unique and would have some deep meaning. There were lots of great names we had thought of, but were already taken by close friends or family. For example, Zach, Duncan, Paul, Elijah, and Jacob were all in the running at one time or another. We puzzled over it for a long time, when it hit me. Isaac would be his name. I thought about how important having a sense of humor is to Nancy and I, and about how if you can still laugh, then all is not lost, and if you can make someone else laugh, you’ll have a friend. Isaac means laughter, or one who laughs. This of course comes from the old testament story about a Rabbi, a priest, and Strom Thurmond going into a bar and….no wait wrong story. Abraham and Sarah both laughed when told they would have a son, so they named him Isaac.

In the spring, Nancy was finishing up her school year, and we were both being bombarded with advice. Some of the advice was practical. “Start an account for college now.” Some of it was sweet “Enjoy every minute, because he will change so fast.” Some of it was kind of creepy, “Isaac….well that’s a real ‘Jew’ name isn’t it?”. And then there was thepervasive and ominous “This is going to change your lives so much.” We knew it would change our lives, but we weren’t sure how, or what we would miss, or how it would change our relationship with each other.

I finally decided that the two of us are a little more mellow than most people, we have a really strong marriage, and that parenthood was going to be what we made of it. Nancy studied parenting books then summed up the contents for me while I tried to play X-box. No amount of studying however prepared us for the baby showers.

People joke about new parents walking around in a daze. My daze began at our first baby shower. I was overwhelmed by how generous and loving everyone was. Presents and cards poured in, and Nancy, being the efficient manager, kept mental notes of what she had, and where everything would go. She even had the foresight to make sure she kept track of every Target gift card, and never let me leave her sight with one, for fear of me coming home with a Playstation 2….. you know…for the baby.

The night before Nancy was induced, Marnie, Daniel, Nancy, and I all went to dinner at Liberty Oak. We talked for a long time, and I realized that within 24 hours, I was going to be responsible for another helpless human being. I thought of the other fathers I knew. I didn’t have the book smarts like Michael, I wasn’t as easy going as Jeff, I wasn’t as introspective as Mark. I thought of my own father, and how he must have felt the night before I was born. He didn’t know what he was doing, but thanks to his guiding hand and lenient judges, I never went to jail.

The morning of Isaac’s birth, felt like we were going on a vacation somewhere. We had our bags packed, we had a long strange trip ahead of us, but once we arrived we were going to have a celebration and the adventure of our lives. Right after Marnie and Daniel delivered lunch, the pain began. Nancy had wanted to experience some of the pain of childbirth partly to test her mettle, and partly to connect to mothers throughout history. She was strong and brave for several hours, but eventually decided that it was time for drugs.

While the epidural was being placed, the baby’s heart rate dropped significantly. Before either of us noticed it on the monitor, the room filled with nurses, and doctors pushing drugs, starting oxygen, and attaching new monitors to Nancy. The flurry of activity quickly subsided when Isaac’s heart rate returned to normal. Nancy and I knew that it wouldn’t be long and we would have our new son.

Several hours later, in the middle of one of Nancy’s pushes, I caught a glimpse of a tiny head covered in thick, wavy black hair, and my heart jumped out of my chest and filled the room. I was counting out loud to help Nancy know how long to push, and I could hear my own voice tremble on the edge of weeping for joy. Nancy pushed and strained four another 30 minutes, and Isaac finally made his appearance. Nancy, Isaac, and Iheld each other and cried for a few holy minutes. I played the song “What a Wonderful World” for him on a little C.D. player in the room.

The next few days were a blur of visitors, food, family, and a particularly memorable “First Head Butt” courtesy of Adam Sasser. I don’t think we went 24 hours without at least one meal showing up at our door courtesy of the good folks at College Park Baptist Church.

Nancy and I slowly figured out routines of feeding, sleeping, and bathing. We were feeling pretty confident about our primary parenting skills by the time I had to go to New York City for my best friend’s wedding. I met up with my friend in Brooklyn and hit it off famously with his fiancée and her family. We were laughing and telling stories on our way to dinner at a little Italian restaurant in Brooklyn when my cell phone rang. It was Michael. He told me he had some bad news. Andrew Russoli had been killed in Iraq. I calmly told my new friends to go on ahead to the restaurant, and that I’d catch up. As soon as they were out of sight. I sat down on the street corner and cried. I hadn’t felt so alone in a long time. I thought of my own son and wife and how desperately I wanted to see them and hold them while I sat sobbing in shock. I called Nancy and told her the news, and we cried together.

Isaac came with us to Andrew’s funeral, and he was a bittersweet bridge between Roland and Sally and Nancy and I . I now know what it is like to love my own child, and I’m frightened by the suffering and devastation that I would feel if I ever lost him.

Our pain and shock slowly dulled as the nights grew colder, and before long, the Christmas trees came out of the closet, and Advent promised us that light was coming to defeat our darkness.

We drove down to Florida to spend some time with family and get Isaac a couple of theme parks under his belt. We arrived in Gainesville the weekend of “Bethlehem Live”, an annual recreation of Bethlehem in the parking lot of one of the big Baptist churches just outside of town. We waited in line with our parents to take the tour. All of the costumed residents of “Bethlehem” were excited because they had heard a rumor that the Messiah had been born that night in their town. We sat on wooden benches and watched as three shepherds ran into the barn with Mary and Joseph and told them about the miracle they had seen while the “Hallelujah” Chorus blared from a C.D. player hidden just under the hay. They stood around and looked at each other for a while, and then herded us out, so the next group could come through.

Something about the whole “Bethlehem Live” concept just didn’t sit right with me. It wasn’t that most of the residents greeted us with a twangy “Shalom yall”. It was something bigger.

In my version of the Christmas story, no one in Bethlehem knows who Mary or Joseph is. My version of the story doesn’t have a smiling, well rested Mary. My version of the stable isn’t a clean barn smelling of fresh hay and smiling happy animals. After seeing childbirth with my own eyes, my version of the Christmas story is very different from the Nativity scenes you can buy in the department stores.

In my version, you have two very tired people who have traveled a long way and are in a strange place. I see a very scared young Mary trying to deliver a baby with just Joseph to help. I imagine the pain of the childbirth. I imagine the smell of the animals. I imagine the fear of having strange shepherds wander in after all is said and done claiming to be sent by God. In my version of the Christmas story there is chaos and bad smells and blood and tears, but in the middle of the storm is a
perfect baby.

The miracle is that God is down in the dirt with us, but to be in the presence of God is to be at peace with the storm.

Wednesday night, I watched the reflection of dancing candles in Isaac’s eyes as we sang Silent Night, and I thanked God for my gift. I see everything with new eyes now.

Last night, Isaac participated in one of our family traditions. On Christmas Eve, amidst the noise and chaos, Nancy and I go to Wal-Mart with twenty dollars each to buy gifts for each other. We do it to experience some of the frenzy without being overwhelmed by it. This year, Isaac and I went and watched the storm together. He was riding in, his baby carrier on my chest. As I watched him marvel at the sites, I thanked God for being in the middle of our storm….even at Wal-mart.

Strength and Honor.

Big Matt

Griswald's Christmas Vacation (HoL12)

Continued from Eleven.

We left Disney and drove about 40 minutes down I-4 to Winter Haven to visit my sister Alison, her husband Ryan, and her two little Munchkins, Elijah and Lillian. Lily is a very busy little girl who will turn two in February. This was the first time I got to meet Eli who is five months older than Isaac, and about three feet taller. Eli and Isaac pretty much just sat around being cute, while Lilly kept herself busy by doing very mom-like things like putting her dolls in Isaac’s empty car seat and trying to figure out how she could affix an orange construction paper star to my shirt. The grown ups staid up late talking and drinking wine, and the kids all slept peacefully.

The next morning, while Ryan was at work, Nancy, Ali, and I rounded up all the kids to go to the public library to see Santa Claus. I had to chuckle thinking about how less than five years ago, whenever we got together there were wild parties and now we are wrangling three kids into an S.U.V. to go see the librarian’s retired husband sweating his ass off in a red fur suit and then eat some Goldfish crackers. Going to see Santa with the kids turned out to be a lot more fulfilling than the parties ever were. Oddly enough, the chances of seeing someone projectile vomit at either event were about the same.

Eli and Isaac didn’t care one way or the other about the fat man in the red suit. Lily on the other hand was not a huge Santa fan. She warmed to him somewhat when he gave her a small wooden goat I’m sure he had made in his workshop. She looked at him with a mixture of caution and pity, as if to convey the sense of “Well here is this Santa Claus we’ve been talking about since October. If he is so great, and can make any toy in the world, then why the hell did I get a wooden goat?”

We took many cool pictures with Santa, and then went out to “The Barn” for lunch. We ate out on the porch overlooking a pond. One of my top five moments of the whole trip was walking out with Lily on to the dock and holding her up so she could feed the fish. She thought the turtles were funny, but the funniest thing she ever saw was when fish would snap at the “Tiger Paw” cereal floating on the water and make a splash. She would laugh out loud whenever a splash surprised her.

We finished our lunch with peppermint cake, and said our goodbyes. Nancy, Isaac and I drove to Orlando to do some shopping and go visit my Dad’s mother, Granny. We sat and visited for a while. I always feel loved whenever I’m around Granny. She had quite a few of the pictures and stories I had e-mailed printed out and sorted on a table in the family room. It made me very proud. As far as I know, Granny was the only person who knew immediately that the word “Laughter” in the title of these e-mails referred to Isaac. My aunt Bobbi made us all dinner and we sat at the table and shared a meal. As we were eating, I realized that Isaac was the fifth generation to sit at that table, and I felt a real connection to the history of our family.

That night we drove back to Gainesville and crashed at my in-laws house. It was good to once again have separate rooms for Nancy and I and the boy. My parents babysat for us while I went and had dinner with my buddy Tonto, and Nancy went and saw Pride and Prejudice with her mom(I couldn’t stand it…..too much “pride”, not enough “prejudice”). Tonto and I had been friends since we were roommates for a summer at Camp Crystal lake. We would stay up late at night doing Simpson’s imitations, and coming up with devilish ways to scare our campers. He and his wife Shannon have three cute, clever kids. Tonto once told me, “You know I don’t know if I’ll ever know my purpose in life, but fatherhood…..that’s gotta be pretty close to whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing.”

Tonto called it a night early, and I went to my folks house to hang out for a while. They gave Nancy and I a very cool Christmas present. Mom handed me an envelope with three slips of paper. Two of the slips were tickets to Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. The third slip was good for one day of babysitting from Gammy and G-Daddy (My father’s preferred grandpa name. I like it. It sounds like he’s a rapper.)

Our last day in Florida was mostly for resting. We had coffee with an old friend and my former Jedi master “Miss O”. I will tell one story about Miss O to let you know how much influence she had in forming my personality. The first time I met her, I was in first grade. My friend, Randy, was in her class. I was not. Randy had to go by her class to pick something up, and I tagged along. Miss O noticed that for the first time ever, Randy had come to the class room with his hands clean and his shoes tied at the same time, and for this he got to pick something out of the “Prize Box”. I too got to pick something out of the “Prize Box” for being there during that momentous occasion. I still have the prize: a fetal pig heart floating in an olive jar filled with formaldehyde. That one moment taught me a lot about showing grace to a stranger, and delighting in the bizarre.

Miss O shared with us some really clever parenting tips and treated us to Starbucks. I’ll share two of her tips. 1) Every year, save every scrap of paper your child brings home in a big file. At the end of the year, go through the papers with the child and pick out 20 important ones to save. Throw the rest away. 2) When going on a car trip, figure out how much spending money you would give your kids, and give it to them in quarters before you leave. Charge them 25 cents each time they whine or ask “When are we going to get there?”

On our last night, we opened a couple more presents and played with our nieces. Cassidy helped me put together some of Isaac’s toys, and Faith roughhoused with my mother-in-law. It was great to see our families and friends, but we are all happy to be home. Thanks for all the presents and hugs and kind words and time and warm places to sleep and meals and laughing. Merry Christmas.

Strength and Honor

Matthew Cravey

Sins of the Father (HoL 11)

I finally got the boy to sleep tonight. We spent all day unpacking from our trip to Florida and napping while watching the Carolina Panthers whoop up on the New Orleans Saints. All three of us are a little bit sick. Nancy has a migraine and a stuffy nose. I have a bit of a sinus problem, and the boy is stuffy and was not in the mood to go to sleep. Tomorrow is a big day and I think Nancy is a little tense as well. Tomorrow, we drop him off for the first time for a few hours at his daycare center “Little Mouse Playhouse”.

We picked this place for a few reasons. It was recommended by our friends, the Boatmans, who have three very smart, outgoing, clever, funny kids who all went there. Secondly, “Little Mouse” is right down the street from us. When I first went in to visit, I got a feeling of organized chaos about the place. There are toys everywhere, but I bet that each one has it’s specific place. There is structure and lesson plans, but everything could be put on hold if a snake wandered on to the playground, and the class could go and look at it and learn about reptiles. Nancy and I both feel like it is the best choice we could make.

All three of us are exhausted from our long journey home from Florida yesterday. Grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, and uncles, all made sure that the boy had enough toys. Our car looked like we had robbed a “Toy’s R Us”. Nancy had a very small area to sit in, and had to hold two bags on her lap during the ride home. It was also really rainy for about four and a half hours of travel time. It was a long ride, but we had a great week.

We started off in Gainesville. I got to spend some of Saturday morning looking at old pictures with my grandmother “Mimi” at her apartment. I hadn’t sat with just the two of us in a very long time and it was wonderful. She reminded me of things from my childhood that I had forgotten about, and told me stories about her sister Helene and brother Paul, which one day I will pass on to Isaac.

Isaac opened his presents from my folks on Sunday, and he got a very cool kick activated “Ferris Wheel”. Isaac’s friend Hannah has one, and he loved it when we visited her last time. Our nieces, Cassidy and Faith, thought it was a very cool toy and spent a good deal of time putting the balls on the Ferris wheel and watching them roll down the slides activating spinners. We also got to spend some time with one of my oldest friends, Danny, and his wife Tracy. They are expecting a little girl any day now, and it was great to share in their anticipation and wonder. I even made Danny do a practice bottle feeding with Isaac.

Nancy’s parents, Cassidy and Faith, and the three of us went to one of my favorite places growing up, Silver Springs, in Ocala on Monday. It’s a Nature park, where they have country music shows in the summer, and they used to film all the old Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies. The signature attraction is the Glass Bottom boats that travel over crystal clear water to view the fish, and springs. I pointed at one of the caves and told Cassidy that I think I saw the little mermaid in there. Boy I love kids. From that point on, we had to stare intently into every cave looking for a big fin or red hair. Isaac got to ride on his first thrill ride there too. They have a “Lighthouse ride” that takes you way up into the sky in little gondolas to observe the river. Isaac did much better than my mother-in-law. Isaac also rode a very cool carousel that day.

We drove down to Orlando that night, and crashed at my Uncle Johnny’s place. It was great to have a place of our own for the night, and we all got a good nights rest, although Nancy was ready to go and kill the neighbor’s rooster the next morning.

Tuesday, we packed the car and drove over to Dismal world. My brother-in-law’s niece got us into Epcot and the Studios for the day. This was definitely the way to “Do” Disney with a baby. There was hardly anyone there. There were no lines, and since Nancy and I used to go to Disney all the time, we got to pick and choose what we wanted to see. We took pictures of Isaac and I being stepped on by an AT-AT over at “Star Tours”. We got another picture of him sitting in a big crate full of snakes over at “Indiana Jones”. My favorite picture is of the three of us sitting on the sign in front of the “Tower of Terror”. I have about a half a dozen pictures of Nancy and I sitting on that sign from previous trips, and it felt good to add him into our weird family ritual.

At Epcot, Isaac was fascinated with all of the audio animatronics on “Spaceship Earth”, and Nancy and I stuffed ourselves at “The Garden Grill”, while a very bored Mickey, Pluto, Chip, and Dale spent a lot of time taking pictures with Isaac in the nearly empty restaurant.

I think my favorite story from the week happened near the end of the day at Epcot. The three of us were tired, and Isaac was starting to get a little cranky. We wandered into the “Japan” pavilion and found a little Zen garden with a koi pond and a waterfall. I stood Isaac up on the edge of the pond to watch the waterfall which fascinated him and seemed to calm him down. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a little boy, maybe six or seven years old watching the two of us. I pretended not to notice him and leaned in close to Isaac and said out loud, “Okay Isaac, at the count of three, I’m going to drop you into the fountain, and I want you to swim down to the bottom like you did last time and pick up all the quarters and bring them back to me. One……Two…..”

At this point, the boy’s father called for him to catch up with his family. The boy yelled back “Hold on just a second dad!”. The little boy was watching us with anticipation that maybe this crazy man was going to throw his baby in the fountain, and that maybe this baby was trained to pick up quarters like a Greek sponge diver. I looked up at the boy, and tried to look slightly surprised but nonchalant. Nancy and I laughed for quite a while. My pastor Michael was right. Your kids become your co-conspirators.

To be continued