Pleasantly Disturbed Friday

It’s been a while since I posted a Pleasantly Disturbed Friday, or even had an update on my most favorite of subjects: The Grandsons!

Cameron has now turned three. A couple of weeks ago, while Janet was out of town visiting her mother, I went over to the son and daughter-in-law’s house for dinner. If I didn’t know it before, I know it now: Cameron owns his grandfather.

And then Caden, almost one, crawling, standing and climbing, watching everything with a slightly suspicious look (“Do I know you? Are you sure?”), following Cameron and his grandfather into Cameron’s bedroom – to fix the Brio toy set, play with stuffed animals, play hide and seek, whatever Cameron can come up with (and he comes up with a lot).

Caden startled his mother the other day when she found sitting on Cameron’s trampoline. And then on the fireplace hearth. It’s called batten-down-the-hatches time.

Since mid-February, work has been intense. I should write that in all capital letters. Crisis after crisis are blending together into a rather large ongoing crisis mishmash. One day I found myself tweeting about three different crises at the same time, and I had to focus to slowly check each tweet to make sure I was tweeting the right one at any given moment.

Factoid: I’ve now read 69 books on the Amazon Kindle.

The crises at work means I’m generally reading less, but I am still reading. Currently that means the World War II suspense novel Winner Lose All by William Brown; Poemcrazy by Susan Goldsmith Wooldridge for the Tweetspeak Poetry book discussion; Not So Fast by Ann Kroeker for the High Calling book discussion; and The Grace of God by Andy Stanley for what I call the Jason-Sarah Wednesday book discussion.

Waiting patiently to be read are Lapse Americana: Poems by Benjamin Myers, which just arrived this week; Poet in New York by Federico Garcia Lorca; and My Bright Abyss by Christian Wiman.

If the weather cooperates, I hope to get on the bike this weekend. Several people have asked me about my bike ride Wildlife Reports I post on Facebook after each ride. I list the numbers and kinds of wildlife I encounter while riding, in descending evolutionary order: horses, dogs, cats, birds, roller bladders, and bikers talking on their cell phones.

Factoid: Longest bike ride I’ve ever done: 93 miles, from Boonville, Missouri, to Hermann, Missouri, on the Katy Trail. Shortest bike ride I’ve ever done: three blocks from my house (my very first ride when I started biking; it was almost physical collapse).

I’m still working with my personal trainer. That means I’m still doing exercises with exotic names like cat’n’camel, bear crawl, scorpion, and dead bug. My un-favorite is the dead bug, epically when I have to put 10-pound weights on my ankles and lift a 10-pound medicine ball from my feet to my hands. And while I’m lying on the floor. They don’t call it Dead Bug for nothing.

Photographs of Cameron and Caden Young by their mother, Stephanie Young.

He taught me two things about fatherhood

He arrived two weeks after his due date, by induction, and he was not impressed, yelling his way out into the world. He was a big baby – at birth he looked like he was three months old, pushing toward 10 pounds. The nurse cleaned him up, wrapped him in a little blanket, and put him in my arms. Eyes in a little round face squinted at me.

I fell in love.

At seven months, sitting between us in his car seat, he tried to take control of the steering wheel. We were on the interstate.

He walked at nine months. He walked for exactly one day. Then he ran and didn’t stop.

At two, he climbed into the car in the garage, keys in hand. He considered himself an adult, so why shouldn’t he drive the car?

He was four, perhaps five, when I noticed something odd about the training wheels on his bike. He wasn’t using them. I took them off, and off he went. When his mother saw him, she burst into tears.

For the elderly neighbor across the street, he was her Jeopardy partner. They’d watch the television show together, and she’d give him snacks.

Early one Saturday morning, we heard the television set on. I stumbled into the den to see what was up, and there he was, watching a golf game on television. Golf. He was five.

And then time begins to run together. I’m not sure what happened, but a lot of time passed between the little boy singing at the top of his lungs for a church Christmas program and a white stretch limousine pulling into the driveway for the senior prom. In between were hundreds if not thousands of soccer games, basketball games, baseball games, and any other kind of game with a ball.

Like that 1987 World Series game, Cardinals and the Twins playing game 5 in Old Busch Stadium. We were there. He explained the game to me.

College, and then his first job, working for a minor league baseball team. And then the jump to Arizona. Watching him load the U-Haul truck. Watching him drive away.

Even good things for your children can be hard.

And then he finds Stephanie in Phoenix. We fly out one Christmas to meet her and her family. She was scared to death. Turns out he had told her all kinds of stories about his mother.

Almost two years later, we flew out again to Phoenix. For their wedding.

And then my St. Louis boy figured out a way to get back to St. Louis. With a pregnant wife in tow.

And then the night they go to the hospital for Cameron’s induction (there must be something in the genes). He falls, hits his head, and I rush to the hospital at one in the morning. He’s not delirious, but he’s disoriented. The x-rays come in. Blood on the skull. The next day, Stephanie’s in labor, and he’s having brain surgery.

It all ends well. Cameron’s born. Two years later, Caden’s born. For Caden’s birth, he wears a bicycle helmet.

He, and his brother Andrew, have taught me two things about fatherhood.

The first thing: Once you become a father, you never stop being a father. How you’re a father changes, but you never stop being a father.

And the second this is, you don’t want to stop.

Happy birthday, Travis Young.

Photograph: Stephanie and Travis Young, with Caden obviously enjoying himself and Cameron standing quietly, with a friend's new baby.

Thanksgiving Blessings 2012

                                                             Cameron Young

                                                               Caden Young

Photographs by Stephanie Young. Used with permission from Cameron and Caden.

A Belated Birthday Party

Since Grandpa’s birthday occurred while we were in London, we went over to our son and daughter-in-law’s house yesterday for a belated celebration. And Grandpa got the two best presents of all – Caden on my right and Cameron on my left. Cameron and Grandpa also got to play about 30 minutes of “how many times can we fill the watering jug with water” and almost an hour of watching the Disney Junior Channel – something about Never Never Land with kid pirates and Captain Hook and a show called “The Octonauts.”

While I was feeding Caden mashed squash, my daughter-in-law pointed out the difference between a parent and a grandparent: “He spits it out and it drives me crazy, but you just laugh.” I told it it’s because parents always have things to do, while grandparents just have to be.

Photograph by Stephanie Young.

A Working Lunch

Today I had guests for lunch at work -- daughter-in-law Stephanie, grandson Cameron and grandson Caden. Cameron polished off most of a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and a pile of fruit. Caden had already had lunch, or it might have been second breakfast. Stephanie had a salad. I had a ham sandwich.

Caden Young, age 9 weeks; Glynn Young, slightly older than that

With Cameron, one has to take pictures fast, because he thinks every phone is either an iPhone or Andriod phone with his apps.

Cameron Young, age 2, reaching for the phone

After lunch, Stephanie was planning to go to the grocery store, boys in tow. If anyone could manage it, it's her.

Update on the Grandsons

I hadn't shared a picture of our new grandson, Caden Thomas Young. He's six weeks old -- but he looks a little older than that. Like his brother, he's a big boy.

Here's Caden at one of his favorite pastimes:

Cameron has taken the new brother in stride.

In fact, Cameron seems quite fond of his brother.

We call them "The Binky Brigade."

Top and bottom photographs by Stephanie Young; middle photography by Janet Young.

Family Time

Just a few photos about what’s been happening with the grandsons.

Cameron spent a good portion of the day Tuesday with his grandmother, including a lunch of some of his favorite foods – cherry tomatoes (he knows where they’re kept), cheese and strawberries. However, he was not impressed with the official food of St. Louis -- toasted ravioli.

Here’s Caden (almost three weeks old) doing one of his two favorite activities – sleeping. (The other is eating.)

And Cameron joined Dad in helping to feed his brother.

Uncle Andrew is in town for a visit this weekend, so we hope to get some photos of him and his nephews.

Top photo by Janet Young; bottom two photos by Stephanie Young. Use with Cameron’s and Caden’s permission.

The family grows

The weekend was rather intense. On Friday night, my son and daughter-in-law went to the hospital to start her induction for their second child. We knew it was a boy, brother to Cameron.

The doctor decided to induce at what was officially a week before what was the due date. Two weeks back or so, the doctor had determined that the baby was likely to be big. Cameron had been a big baby – 10 pounds, 3 ounces. This one promised to be big, too.

I got to the hospital early Saturday morning. Things were progressing fast. My wife arrived about an hour after I did.  At 10:25 a.m., he was born. Our Cinco de Mayo grandson.

It turns out that he was bigger than his older brother – 10 pounds, 9 ounces. Twenty-one-and-a-half inches long.

Everything went fine. Mom and son are doing fine. Dad is doing fine.

Our family has grown by one.

Welcome, Caden Thomas Young.

You are already well loved.

Photograph: Dad Travis Young introducing the two new brothers, Cameron and Caden. Photograph taken by Grandfather Glynn Young.

Pleasantly Disturbed Friday

It’s been awhile since I had a pleasantly disturbed Friday, although I’ve had a number of disturbed Fridays without the pleasantly.

Yes, that is my grandson Cameron in the photo above, taken by his grandmother on Wednesday in a small park behind the city hall of the little suburb where we live. They had had lunch, discovered a fountain, and then wandered over to the park. He wasn’t too sure about what was going on, until he saw the slide. And then he knew. He also discovered the swing.

Cameron has a little brother due at any moment now, but if he holds off today, I’ll be having lunch with Cameron and my daughter-in-law. If he doesn’t, I may be having lunch just with Cameron.

We’re on the verge of having two of these characters. It’s wonderful.

I’ve been reading the Collected Poems of R.S. Thomas 1945-1990. Thomas was an Anglican priest whose parish was in Wales. He was also a prolific poet, and if I’m reading him correctly, he really didn’t think too highly of his parishioners at the beginning. But the poems do change and soften.

Coming up on the “finished reading/books to review” list are Tripp York’s The Devil Wears Nada (I love the title) and You and Three Others Are Approaching a Lake: Poems by Anna Moschovakis (I like that title, too). Coming up on the “to read” list are Travis Thrasher’s novel Temptation, Dale Cramer’s novel The Captive Heart, Shawn Smucker’s Building a Life Out of Words, Joel Jacobson’s Water the Mud and C.S. Lakin’s The Unraveling of Wentwater.

Last Saturday, I met a gardening consultant at the local plant nursery, and burned through some plastic. We got plants for the back garden, which is shady; plant for the east garden, which is sunny and shady, and plants for the west garden, which gets the noon sun with a couple of hours on either side. She picked out some cool stuff. I picked out things that looked cool but which we mostly didn’t buy.

We’ve been watching the flowers in the front of our house with some sense of awe. Last fall, we had winter non-hardy pansies planted about a small maple tree. The winter was extraordinarily mild, and the non-hardy pansies survived and have been doing quite well, thank you. It’s been a strange spring overall – an unusually warm March when everything bloomed early, roses in April instead of May, a lot of the bulbs coming up on schedule but confusing everybody.

I got another bike ride in on Wednesday night – my third this year. I’m riding my hybrid instead of the road bike – you lean forward less on a hybrid – but the therapist has said I can start easing into the road bike when I’m ready. I have to smile to think that 20 miles on the bike used to be a typical first half or first third of my ride; and then I remember last August, when the only comfortable position for my back was flat on the floor, and the pain was excruciating. Yeah, I’m not where I used to be, but I am vastly better than I was last summer.

I’ve talked about my writing on other posts, and there’s nothing new to add. I did have a young colleague from another team at work come into my office yesterday and say he’d finished reading Dancing Priest, and that he thoroughly enjoyed it. He asked all kinds of questions about how long it took to write, about the characters, about the sequel – he was truly interested. For some reason, it always surprises me when people show this kind of interest.

Of course, I’m always glad to talk about it.

Photograph: Cameron Young by his grandmother, Janet Young, April 25, 2012.

A child's heart

It doesn’t matter whether we go to his house or he comes to ours. Our grandson Cameron has learned to connect his grandparents with some fairly definitive things.

One is dancing. My wife has a CD of children’s songs by Chad Stuart called “Don’t Argue with an Elephant.” As soon as Cameron spots my wife or me, he runs for the CD player, and bounces up and down until we turn it on. Then we dance.

A second connection he makes with us has to with books. He loves being read to. One of his favorite books is Five Little Monkeys. There are several others. He loves hearing the stories read aloud, over and over again. And his grandparents are only too happy to oblige.

A third connection is blocks and Legos. The two of us build stuff – mostly towers. And we see how many blocks we can place on our heads. Cameron likes to knock the towers down, so we can build them anew.

What these three activities – dancing, reading and building – have in common is that Cameron gets our undivided attention.

This past Sunday, we went over to my son and daughter-in-law’s house for an hour, to drop off my son’s birthday present. Cameron was getting better from a bout of respiratory crud, but he perked right up when we walked in the door. He grabbed my hand, walked me to the pile of blocks and Legos, and pointed.

He trusted his grandfather enough to know that I would immediately sit down and start building a tower.

He’s learned that his father is already ready to play and horse around, and that his mother is there to hold him when he’s sick. His grandmother will always have cherry tomatoes stashed away (Cameron loves cherry tomatoes. And salad.) His grandfather packs a BlackBerry in a holster, and Cameron always wants to see it, because the wallpaper on it is a picture of – Cameron.

In short, this little boy who’s almost two has learned he’s surrounded by love. He has his moments of unloveability like we all do, but he knows that regardless of what he does, he’s loved.

He has that’s child’s heart that’s full of trust based upon consistent love.

Is it any wonder that Jesus said “let the little children come to me?” Is it any surprise that it’s the kind of heart – a child’s heart – that he wants all of us to have? It’s not that our hearts are pure and good. He knows better.

But it is that our hearts are full of trust for Him, because we know better.

To see more posts on trust, please visit Bonnie Gray, who’s hosting a blog carnival today on trust at her blog Faith Barista.

Photograph: Cameron Young watching Monsters Inc. on television, by Stephanie Young. Notice the blocks in the foreground.

Happy Birthday to Attila the Honey

He was our firstborn, the son of two parents who were rather bookish, studious and quiet.

He wasn’t.

We nicknamed him Attila the Honey, the original strong-willed child with a tender heart. He walked at nine months, for exactly one day, and then he discovered he could run. At about two, he decided he was an adult, and should be able to do everything his parents did. Like climb in the car and turn on the ignition. He liked to go to restaurants – and climb into strangers’ laps like they were old friends.

When he was not quite five, he no longer needed training wheels on his bicycle.

I can’t remember a time he wasn’t into baseball, but there must have been one. His father wasn’t. Everything Travis learned about baseball, and he learned a lot, he didn’t learn from his father.

When he was 15, he went on a mission trip to Haiti. This was when President Clinton had sent U.S. troops in to restore civil order, and not all order had been restored. But he went, got sunburned, heard voodoo drums in the hills at night, fell off the back of a truck, fell in love with a bunch of children, helped with a water project and had one of the most important experiences of his life.

After college, he worked a few years (with a local baseball team, the River City Rascals) and then he went off to Phoenix to take an operations job with an expansion league. The league shut down after a year but he found a job with Marriott and started learning the hotel business. He met this girl named Stephanie at church. They got married in 2008. Since nothing would keep Travis away from the home of Cardinal Nation for long, they moved to St. Louis when she was pregnant with their firstborn, named Cameron, who was born in 2010. Cameron is going to have a little brother come May.

It is my prayer that Cameron will be gentler with his little brother more – a lot more – than his father was with his little brother, Andrew. Travis believed he was fully capable of taking care of Andrew, regardless of what his parents said. Fortunately, Andrew turned out to be made of tough stuff.

Happy birthday, my son. You taught us much – about ourselves, about faith and about love. You still are.

Top photo: Dad holding seven-month-old Travis

Middle photo: Dad holding one-year-old Cameron

Bottom photo: Attila the Honey in his favorite shirt at the 2011 World Series.

My Hopes for Christmas

Certain Christmases stand out in my mind, usually because of what it was that I received as a present or presents.

When I was five, it was my red bike – with training wheels. The bike became part of my body for the next five years, until I received a 26-inch big black bike – for Christmas.

When I was six, it was a collie puppy. We named him Skipper.

At seven, it was a Lionel train.

At 12, it was a Daisy air rifle (not unlike Ralphie's in A Christmas Story).

When I was 13, it was a chess set – a Roman chess set, with the chessmen representing Caesar Augustus, his wife Livia, Cicero (the bishops), foot soldiers for pawns and so on. I still have that chess set. All the pieces are there; a pawn’s sword might be broken off and a felt bottom on a piece a little ragged, but the set is intact.

As you get older, gifts tend to become more practical or educational. Interestingly enough, I remember always getting a book or books as “side” presents to the main event. When I was 8, the book was 1001 Riddles For Children, and yes, I still have it. When I was 11, it was a Horizon Caravel book called Russia Under the Czars. I still have that one, too. And you can still find it – at antique book shops. (Which means I’m older than an antique book. Nice.) Growing up, I was usually the easy one in the family to buy a gift for – just about any book would do.

Some things don’t change. I still love books.

What does change, though, is the idea of stuff. As I get older, I’m finding that stuff – possessions – holds increasingly less appeal. I have never participated in Black Friday, even when it was still called the day after Thanksgiving (another one of those memories held by us antiques). My wife knows how to get me to a mall to buy clothes – a suggestion we might stop off at the bookstore.

If I have hopes for Christmas, then they are about family. My two sons and my daughter-in-law. My grandson, Cameron. My grandbaby to be. My wife.

I think the most perfect Christmas I could imagine would be to have the family together, and sitting with 20-month-old Cameron reading the same story book 14 times in a row. His current love is a “finger” book – the kind you can stick your fingers in and move things around – called Who, as in who lives in a hole? Or the sea, or a tree. He loves the book. He loves having the book read to him. Repeatedly. Each time is a brand new experience, and he smiles and laughs and claps his hands for yet another reading.

It’s not a lot to hope for, at least compared to computers, an iPad, a car, travel, stocks, bonds or real estate, or world peace.

But it is priceless.

Over at Faith Barista, Bonnie Gray is hosting a blog carnival on faith, with this week’s topic being “Your Hopes for Christmas.” To see more posts, please visit Faith Barista.

Photograph of Cameron Young by Stephanie Young. Used with Cameron's permission.

Great Gifts, Small Packages

A week ago this past Saturday, I bopped on over to oldest son’s house to drop off some stuff and, of course, to see the grandson. Cameron just had a checkup at the doctor’s office, and he’s 32 pounds and just a smidge shy of three feet tall. And fast.

As I pulled into their driveway, I looked up and saw him peering out of the window. It was a nice day, the windows were open, and I heard my son say to him, “Cameron! Who’s that? It’s Grandpa!” He sees me get of the car, and disappears from the window.

And then I hear a squeal of delight. That’s the only way I know to describe it: a squeal of delight.

He’s waiting for me at the top of the stairs. Well, waiting is the wrong word. He’s bouncing at the top of the stairs. And for the next hour he and I will play on the floor, read books, sing, giggle, play with cars and trucks, and throw plastic balls.

It’s exhausting. It’s wonderful.

It’s often been said that grandparents and grandchildren have to conspire against the parents. Cameron and I don’t conspire. We just play.

And I’m learning the gift of grandparenting, and what it is that grandparents give children that parents too often can’t – their total undivided attention. When Cameron and I are together (and this is true for Cameron and his grandmother as well), we don’t worry about anything else. We don’t care about work, or cutting the grass, or cleaning the table, or the multitude of projects needed to be done around the house, or getting the car serviced, or anything else except each other. Parents have to deal with a lot of other things; grandparents give those things up and don’t think twice about it.

Courtesy of a friend who works at the St. Louis Cardinals, my son and daughter-in-law were able to get tickets for the seventh game of the World Series. My wife and I got to babysit Cameron. I’m thrilled the Cardinals won, of course, but I think I got the better deal that night. We played for a while, and then we took off to Olive Garden for dinner. Cameron was extraordinarily well behaved for a toddler, and the only challenge was keeping him from eating the orange crayon (he preferred the orange crayon to the dark green). We went back home and played some more, and then he went off to bed.

It was a perfect evening.

Babies and children are a huge amount of work. It takes extraordinary amounts of energy just to keep up with them. And we’re glad our parenting days are behind us.

But to hear that little squeal of delight, to feel those little arms hug your neck, to listen to that chortle of laughter when you do something goofy – there are very few things more delightful than those. Very few. And when I think of them, I’ll let you know.

Over at Faith Barista, Bonnie Gray is hosting a blog carnival on faith. This week’s prompt is “a recent gift from God.” To see more posts, please visit Faith Barista.

Photograph, top (by Stephanie Young): Cameron and Grandpa doing something weird but funny during the LSU-Auburn football game. Bottom (by Grandpa Young): Cameron with the orange crayon at Olive Garden with his grandmother (note the suitable baseball attire; it was the night of game 7 of the World Series, after all).

Another Pleasantly Disturbed Friday

I posted a Pleasantly Disturbed Friday post last week, and I was pleasantly disturbed enough that I was out of sync. It was supposed to have been today. So I was pleasantly disturbed enough, and I pleasantly disturbed my friend Duane Scott (host for PDF) enough, so I thought I would get back into sync. So here I am. But I'm not sure if I'm in sync or not. Or something. (Yes, even I can tell that I’m pleasantly disturbed.)

The Kindle is going to be my downfall. You can get a lot of books free, or really cheap (like 99 cents and $2.99, prices I haven’t seen attached to books for a very long time).

I’ve been reading Words Made Fresh: Essays on Literature and Culture by Larry Woiwode. This one is the physical book, not the Kindle version. He lives on a farm in North Dakota, is the state’s poet laureate, and he “writes good.”

One of the books sitting on my Kindle right now is Laura Barkat’s Rumors of Water: Thoughts on Creativity and Writing. In addition to the Kindle version, it’s also available in paperback. Once I finish the Woiwode book, I’m jumping into this one.

Two books waiting to read (I’m reviewing both of them): Job Searching with Social Media for Dummies by Joshua Waldman (publishes Sept. 6) and God Breaketh Not All Men’s Hearts Alike: New & Later Collected Poems by Stanley Moss (publishes Oct. 4).

Our weather here in St. Louis set a record on Wednesday – 103 and continued dry. We broke 100 yesterday and still no sign of rain. The people who know about these things say the weather has been good for a bumper apple crop – but nothing else. Our yard looks rather deadish in places. We’re supposed to see some easing of temperatures by Sunday.

Our youngest has left the Midwest and moved from Kansas City to Florida. He thinks beaches, and his mother thinks hurricanes. I reminded her that I lived in Florida when I was younger. I get a stare. “Yes, when you were a year old.” My youngest didn’t know whether I was kidding or not when I told him we’d come and visit during the winter for two or three weeks. He still doesn’t know.

Speaking of family (I’m shameless about these transitions), we had a little visitor last night for a couple of hours. His dad was at a ball game and his mom had a dinner with people from work, so we had – Cameron! He’s approaching 18 months, and he moves at the speed of light. We had a delicious dinner of peach, sweet potatoes (from the jar), carrot wheels, cheerios, and Teddy Grahams, then we hit the Legos, blocks, various and sundry stuffed animals, a toy radio that plays “Picnic Time for Teddy Bears” (his father’s and uncle’s), and old remote controls for the television no longer in use. He aims them at the TV and presses a button. If nothing happens, he frowns – and may throw the remote in the direction of the television set. Just like his father does.

His grandmother took a  picture with her phone. That face has more than a little mischief in it.

Pleasantly Disturbed Friday

Image Design by Duane Scott

Some time back, my friend Duane Scott started a feature called Pleasantly Disturbed Thursday, and invited us to be pleasantly disturbed with him. It was a random kind of blog post, talking about what you were up to, interesting or dull things going on in your life, the kinds of things that create a pleasant disturbance. It went on for quite a while, and then trickled off.

I was actually encouraged to see that Duane was reviving it as Pleasantly Disturbed Friday, and I think the first one was last week. The next one is Sept. 2. I’m pleasantly disturbed enough to go out of cycle, being a week late or a week early. Or both.

I’m going to be doing one of those Teaching Company courses, this one on “Classics of British Literature.” It’s 48 lectures, by a professor who teaches at CalTech and the University of London. You could buy the CDs or the DVDs, and I opted for the CDs, to listen while I drive to and from work.

Several years ago, I got really hooked on these courses. When I was doing my independent consulting thing, I had one client about 40 miles south of St. Louis, and another one about a four-hour drive away, up in north central Missouri almost on the Iowa border. So going to and from these clients, I would listen to lectures on the history of Rome, the history of Greece and all kinds of other history and literature courses.

Sitting on my nightstand right now: Longing for Home by Frederick Buechner; the Book of Common Prayer; the new issue Poetry Magazine; Poiema: Poems by D.S. Martin; and my Kindle. What will likely be opened and read before I go to sleep tonight: the Buechner book and the Book of Common Prayer.

I’ve actually finished reading Poiema, but I’m going back and rereading some of the poems. They are good. It’s poetry with a strong religious or spiritual theme.

Last magazine I read: the new issue of Writer’s Digest.

Next magazine I’ll read: Poets & Writers.

I’m enjoying my Kindle. I’ve now read six books on it – a couple of suspense mysteries, two poetry collections, and two books on writing (one of which was Luci Shaw’s Breath for the Bones.) I like the Kindle – I like it a lot.

I just finished a big book. No, a humongous book – 650 pages. It’s called The Emperor of Lies by Steve Sem-Sandberg. It was published two years ago in Sweden and became a surprise best-seller. And it’s nothing like those Girl with the Dragon Tattoo books. It’s about the Holocaust and based on real people in the Jewish ghetto in Lodz, Poland during World War II. The author did a phenomenal amount of research, and the depth of the story shows it. My review will be posted next Tuesday.

Our youngest son spent the night with us Tuesday, on his way south. He’s transferring from Kansas City to Florida, and he’s all excited about it. And yes, we’re going through all the usual things parents go through when their adult children move away. I keep reminding myself that our oldest moved to Phoenix for a few years, got married, and came back to St. Louis in time to provide our first grandchild.

And speaking of Cameron (notice the clever transition), he’s getting big. He likes to dance with his grandmother, build Legos with his grandfather (and his grandfather loves Legos), and eat peaches and bananas. When the youngest was here Tuesday, we all went out to dinner, so I got a Cameron fix. Here’s a recent photo.

Photograph of Cameron Young by Stephanie Young, used because Cameron said I could.

Photograph of Pleasantly Disturbed swiped from Duane Scott’s blog, Scribing the Journey.

The Joy of the Everyday

So Bonnie Gray at Faith Barista asks, how are you finding joy in everyday life?

The older I get, the more I become aware of time. I find myself become more focused on creating, mostly writing, but reaching for something I haven’t done before (like a sestina poem) or trying to do something in a different way. My reading is becoming more diverse, and for whatever reason I’m continuing to rediscover the joys of poetry (which is something others have experienced as well).

And I have also become one of those grandfathers. I have fallen in love with what is now about 30 pounds of energy and personality, sweetness and intensity, 30 pounds that has already figured out his grandparents. And I don’t care. What can you say about a little person who throws his arms wide to embrace as soon as you walk in the house?

I knew I would likely be a candidate for the stereotyped grandfather. But I didn’t expect to be so swift and so complete. Cameron conquered the first time I held him some 16 months ago in the labor and delivery room.

I don’t know exactly what “it” is about being a grandparent. I saw my parents around my oldest and my mother around my youngest (my father died the same year my youngest was born). I saw neighbors go gaga when the grandkids came over, and I smiled.

Now my neighbors smile at me. And I don’t care.

Part of what goes on must have something do with pressure, as in, all the pressure of raising this child is really off the grandparents and on the parents. As a parent, you’re always scared you’ll screw up, and you do, but you manage to get through it.

But a grandparent, ah, the pressure is gone, except for the pressure to keep my mouth (mostly) shut about telling my son and daughter-in-law what they should be doing. I’m not the one God has given Cameron to raise, and God knows what He’s doing, even when I don’t.

My favorite time with my grandson is when we play with Legos (he’s a builder, not a destroyer). And when I get to feed him. And when we take a walk. And when he sits on my lap at a restaurant, like he did last Sunday. When we play with his toys. When he dances the “Bernie.” When he points the dummy remote at the TV set and nothing happens (he’s been known to hurl the remote when that happens, a proclivity he gets from his father). I don’t even mind changing his diaper, even the bad ones. And of course there are the times when he falls asleep in my arms. And when I watch him sleep. And did I tell you how tickled I get when he climbs? (And, oh, does he climb!) Or the expression on his face when he discovers something new?

I’m a case when it comes to my grandson.

I find myself praying for him, too. Praying for the joy he is. Praying for the boy and man he will become. Praying for his parents. Praying for his Uncle Andrew (Cameron’s middle name is also my middle name and his uncle’s first name).

When I’m not praying, sometimes I simply sit dumbstruck with the family joy God has blessed me with: my wife, my two sons and my daughter-in-law.

And now my grandson.

To see more posts on finding joy in the everyday, please visit Bonnie Gray at Faith Barista.

Photographs:

Top: Cameron waking up in a good mood, by Stephanie Young.
Middle: Cameron opening wide for a piece of peach offered by his grandmother, taken by Glynn Young.
Bottom: Cameron no longer able to fight off sleep, by Travis Young.
All photos used with Cameron’s permission.