Birthday

It’s a window isn’t it

a pane of polished sand

that doesn’t separate time

or reality but effects a separation

of the mind, of a perception

that something changes

as the clock ticks and sounds

on its circular way

candles add light

but not understanding

necessarily

Photograph by Lynn Greyling via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

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.

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.

On this occasion

She came to me young,

and lovely, she did, carrying

a beauty she’d deny,

a beauty of face, yes,

but more than that,

a beauty of form,

a beauty of spirit,

and soul. She taught me

to be loved, to be honored,

to be cherished, becoming

the best part of me, more

than a rib, more

than a side, more

than the oxygen I breathe,

a heart, my heart, and I am

still struck dumb in wonder.

Today is my wife’s birthday. She is 20 going on 21, the same age as when we met. And she is beautiful.

Photograph: Janet Young holding her second grandson Caden Young, May 2012.

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.

Happy Birthday, Charles

I look at the book’s thickness

and dread (past tense: drood?)

my great expectations but Pip

and the decayed lady

in the decayed wedding dress

captured me, Charles, they did,

captured me forever, opening

the great not the little dorrit

of my head. I twisted

with Fagin but Nancy died,

Charles, she died! while

David in his penny meadow

watched Sydney die so Lucy

could love in one city if not

the other and Little Nell, Charles,

such a curiosity they shopped as

they called to the boats in Boston,

what of Little Nell? What of her?

Uriah heaped evil upon evil and

that little villain who quilped

his badness, Charles, where did

he come from and where did he go?

An even easier miser gave

his name for all as he pondered

the surplus population (like

the child with the crutch, Charles).

Mysteries, wonderful mysteries,

but the greatest was the boy

in the blacking factory

re-imagining the literature,

re-imagining the novel,

re-imagining the language;

he did that, Charles, you know

he did that, that boy; that boy

in the blacking factory

fathered them all.

Today is the 200^th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. I was 12 when I read A Tale of Two Cities, 14 when I read Great Expectations and 15 when I read David Copperfield. Dickens opened up a new world for me, and he remains a major influence on my writing.

Related:

The Charles Dickens Museum

There’s an online journal assembling all of his known published work: http://www.djo.org.uk/

This poem is submitted for Open Link Night at dVerse Poets. To see more poems, please visit the site. The links will be live at 2 p.m. Central time today.

Happy Birthday to the Better Half

At one time, Memorial Day always fell on May 30. Then came the leisure society and the three-day weekend, and Memorial Day became the last Monday in May.

My wife was born on May 30, back when May 30 was Memorial Day. Her father was career military, with service in World War 11 and Korea, so the day has a connotation for her beyond a birthday.

This year, her birthday falls on Memorial Day, “like it’s supposed to,” she says. It also doesn’t officially happen until later tonight. “It’s not my birthday yet,” she said as she woke up this morning. (Although she did choose to open birthday cards this morning; just saying…)

Anyway, happy birthday to my wife, Janet, mother of my sons, grandmother of my grandson.

Photograph: Cameron and his grandmother, by Stephanie Young.

A year of blessing

My grandson is one year old today.

A year ago, we faced the prospect of Cameron’s father, my firstborn, dealing with brain surgery while my daughter-in-law was in labor. My son is telling that story on his blog; you can find all the details there, with his account of what happened on March 9, March 10 and March 11, 2010.

It’s still very difficult for me to talk about. Even writing about it makes me veer toward losing it. My son has no memory whatsoever of a 12-hour period. But I do.

So here is Cameron Andrew Young, one year old, threatening to walk at any moment.

We call him the little happy baby. The happy little guy. The laid-back baby (well, he's laid back compared to his father and uncle). He has a sweetness about him that totally beguiles his grandparents and has his grandfather in the palm of his hand. Last year, my son and daughter-in-law took him on the grand tour of Louisiana, to meet all the relatives in New Orleans and Shreveport, and Cameron conquered there, too.

So many things about him totally delight me, but few as much as watching him when my wife walks in the room and his face breaks into this huge smile.

He’s a lot of work. All babies are a lot of work. He spent four days with us in January while his parents went off to San Francisco, and we were forcibly introduced to just how much work babies are, even ones as sweet as this one. (The weather was also bad, so it was four days inside.)

But what a blessing this child is.

I knew I was likely to be totally enthralled, but the reality has been something else again. I have to practice patience and forbearance, and do it consciously. I would babysit at the drop of a hat. I’d drive my son and daughter-in-law crazy if I showed up at their house every time I wanted to.

We saw him last night, to celebrate an early birthday for him and us. The big party is on Saturday (when I have to share him with everyone else.)

I think back to one year ago, and I know how good God is.

Photographs: Cameron Young, by Cameron Young's grandfather. The bottom photograph is of Cameron and his paternal grandmother, who usually doesn't like posing for pictures but one can get away with it when she's holding her grandson.

May 30 - A Brilliant Day

Her 45-year-old father was in California, stationed at a military base. He thought he'd retired but idiots in Pyongyang and Beijing invented the Korean War and he found himself called up again for active duty. He was career Navy, and that was probably a good thing; he’d always been the family handful. When I met him, he was a fun, storytelling, baseball-loving man of 67. It was hard to imagine some of the stories the family told about him, but then again, it was hard to imagine some of the stories my family told about my father. And some they wouldn't tell.

Her 22-year-old mother was pregnant and the baby overdue (it turned out that lateness was something feathered into her DNA). And the young mother-to-be was likely feeling miserable in the late May north Louisiana heat. This was before air conditioning, which truly allowed the South to rise again. She was staying at her older sister’s house in what was then the country out from Shreveport (it would eventually become suburbs). The young woman decided to help speed things along and went outside to cut the grass. And she did. She cut the grass (a couple of acres) and she sped things along. The baby, a little girl, was born sometime before midnight.

They named her Janet. Her father, a movie buff who occasionally ran across movie stars in southern California, said she was named for the actress Janet Leigh (Jamie Leigh Curtis' mom) who starred in the movie “My Sister Eileen.” Her mother denied that story, and frankly, I believed her mother. But I always liked her father’s story.

Two years later, a little brother joined her. And then 11 years after that, another little brother came along. I’ll do the math for you – her father was 59 when her youngest brother was born. Did I mention that her father was a handful?

Some eight years after she found herself babysitting a new little brother, she came waltzing into the office of LSU’s student newspaper, The Daily Reveille, in Baton Rouge and said to me, “Hi. I’m Janet Lowrey. Do you have any stories for me to do?” I was the big-shot managing editor; all the reporters, of which she was one, reported to me and I assigned stories and beats.

That was in January of 1973. We were married that August. I didn’t compare to her father and my father in the black sheep department, but I was my own kind of handful.

So, I’d like to thank my deceased father-in-law and my still living, still-cutting-the-grass and-the-neighbors’-grass-too mother-in-law, for bringing that little baby girl into the world all those years ago. They never knew what a blessing they were creating for me.