An Obituary

I’m sitting at my mom’s kitchen table, sitting in my dad’s chair, drinking my dad’s crappy coffee from his coffee cup thinking about how I’m now the patriarch of this branch of the Galstad family – and then chastising myself for thinking the literally most patriarchal thoughts a person can have in 2021. And none of this changes the fact that my dad is gone. Stanton Orlin Galstad died earlier this week. And as much as the reality of it all has set in as I drove across the country, and have spent the last 4 days helping my sisters and my mom rearrange their daily lives and settle his affairs… well it hasn’t fully set, yet. So I’m doing what helps me the most when I need to process extremely painful and personal issues: I write to the world – and in this case to all the people that knew my dad. So please read my catharsis, and share in remembering all the joy and wonder that was Stan Galstad. 

Music. It started with the music and that’s probably what most of you remember him for. Whether directing church choir, community band, high school band, or any number of musical acts of service he performed, it was always the music. We never had a lot of material possessions when I was a kid – less charitably I will joke that we didn’t live in the trailer park but we lived next to it – but we always had access to musical instruments. And when my dad and my mom were hustling their asses off to keep us in the house and keep us fed, and maybe give us a little more comfortable life my dad used those musical instruments to put food on the table. Our little house was filled with the sounds of students of all instruments getting private lessons from my dad. Trumpets, Oboes, Clarinets, Piano, Flutes… basically my dad taught any instrument that didn’t involve strings or percussion from the living room of our house. This was in addition to the morning paper route he ran with me, the factory jobs that destroyed his shoulder, all of his community and church musical exploits, attending school into his 40’s, tuning pianos on the side, and a whole host of other jobs. And it all came back to the music for as long as I can remember. Achieving his teaching license and becoming a public school music teacher was one of his highest personal achievements. I joke about the fact that it took me 14 years to get my bachelors degree and I just realized that he beat me by ten years at the resilience game. 

 My dad finally got his first real teaching job in Sleepy Eye, MN and that school did not know what hit it. My dad on podium in Sleepy Eye was a combination of Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society, and Robin Williams in Aladdin. He accepted no excuses, he tolerated no shenanigans, and he cared about music and your musical talent more than anyone else ever could or would. He took a 23-member band that couldn’t play their own school song or the National Anthem, and in three years had that same school band showcased at the State music convention. He challenged the students from a sports-centric farm school to care enough and work hard enough to not just succeed, but to excel and to take their musical talents out into the community. And he was passionately hilarious. Sweetness and light that man said and did some crazy things to try to communicate his musical vision. Between the dancing, the voices, the flailing, the nearly tearful pleading, but never the swearing (you were always better than me, dad) he was a human dynamo. He was the 90’s era musical equivalent of the Honey Badger. Every note I have gotten about condolences from my Sleepy Eye friends talks about my Dad and the joy he brought during band. 

 He was just as passionate a father as a teacher, he just expressed it differently. He cared about us kids so much, and yet he never wanted to push us in a direction we didn’t want to go. So he was quiet to the point of annoyance when asked about what or how we should approach our futures. This was his love language. On the flip side he had one of the most childishly glorious senses of humor and I credit him with my inability to let an inadvertent double entendre slip by without snorting. Dad, you have no idea how much trouble you’ve caused me when working with older “more mature” people. And then there was his faith. 

 My Dad’s faith is my example. The understated expression of service to others was his form of evangelism. He couldn’t verbally express the love of God very well, and discussing the merits of Christianity mostly left him talking in circles or just sitting there quietly. But you knew he loved Jesus by his actions and the way he treated people. The way he taught with passion and the way he pierce all of the roadblocks for success and reach the inner understanding of almost anyone. When he taught, and when he talked, you knew you were the most important person to him at that moment. He was the living embodiment of a parable – to the point that I am only now starting to see what he was doing years ago. 

 My dad is gone, and he left a legacy I am proud of. I can only hope to have my kids and the people I’ve touched speak the same way of me when I am gone. I love you dad. Thanks.

A Lavish and Unrepentant Application of Love

It starts with an email. A seemingly innocuous email about something gone wrong with one of the children – something gone wrong that I can instantly see stems from something I failed at as a parent. Today it was about my youngest daughter cursing out her sister using words that sound very “Dad”-ish. And since I’m human, on the other side of the world, and an analytical sort of person suffering from jet-lag and thus blessed with all the early-morning time in the world to think about these things I start compiling a list of other contributing factors to this behavior that, if I’m being honest, mitigates my culpability by quite a bit. And since I’m me I keep digging and digging at this in some ludicrous search for an ultimate cause, versus a proximate cause, and realize that it’s not just my rancid mouth that’s to blame. No, the ultimate cause of most of my family troubles is this: My heart is not big enough, genuine enough, and there is not enough joy and love in my being to spend the time required to properly raise my kids. I am not forgiving enough. I am not willing to spend the hard, quiet time in one-on-one and group interaction with my kids. I can find all the time in the world to research dive equipment, play video games, brew beer, apply for grad school, plan career moves, deal with the house and bills, and plan another vacation but I cannot spare the time and intestinal fortitude to sit and talk with my kids for more than a couple minutes a day about how much I love them, talk about their day and what’s important to them, or just spend some quiet time paying attention to them. In short: I am a selfish person that doesn’t spend enough time with his kids because it is easier to deal with everything else in life than to actually show love on a daily basis to the ones that I claim are dearest to me.

Hey, Look! I found that ultimate cause. Let’s talk some specifics because writing deeply personal stuff and posting it to the internet is my therapy.

My youngest daughter requires the most interaction of any of my kids and she gets the least. Unfortunately, her way of garnering interaction and attention has the unintended side effect of infuriating those closest to her. Because, as in the case of many adopted orphans, she doesn’t distinguish between positive and negative attention and so she goes with what’s the easiest to obtain – which is negative attention. And she does it subconsciously. All the time. And as thinking and loving parents we should acknowledge all of this and then build and execute a plan that factors in all her and our relationship variables and dynamics in order to help her express herself positively and help us as parents grow to be more understanding and supportive. And we can’t. After over four years we still can’t figure this out despite being highly-educated people with tons of resources at our disposal. Because even with all our education, experience and understanding we still get stuck in the moment on a daily or hourly basis and react and over-react in all the ways we wish our daughter wouldn't. Paul said it best in Romans 7:15-20 about knowing what you want to do but doing what you don’t want to do. And I live this in my home every day. Over and over and over again. I know that my youngest daughter requires a lavish and unrepentant application of love, and instead I provide a knee-jerk reaction of discipline and punishment and call it parenting. Or worse, I simply stay busy with whatever else is going on in life and speak some platitudes to whatever is going on in the house and make it sound “wise”.

So about that ultimate cause… what about the ultimate solution? I wrote it above and this is what prompted me to write: My daughter (and my wife, and all my friends, and all the people around me) requires a lavish and unrepentant application of love. She needs it on a daily basis and it needs to be applied with wisdom and kindness, and self-control, and gentleness, and all the things that they sang about on that “Music Machine” record we had in the house when I was a kid. The Fruit of the Spirit? Yeah, those things that I haven’t got. The only source for those things is found in Romans 7:25. It is the example of God’s love – his lavish and unrepentant application of love through his Son - that I must use with my daughter. More grace. More wisdom. More loving-kindness. More judicious applications of discipline and mercy. More of all the things that I don't have enough of. So I'll continue to pray for that same application of love to me and Jenn so that we can give it to our kids. Because God knows that we're kind of sucking at it right now.

Can I Look it up on Google?

I am not a perfect parent. I have never claimed to be one and every day I am reminded a little more of how imperfect – and in some cases downright terrible – I am. Today was one of those days.

I am a very impatient driver. I never took the advice of “Don’t drive angry!” given by Bill Murray’s character in “Groundhog Day.” As I grow older I find myself less tolerant of what I consider poor driving form each and every day, and living in one of the most congested regions of the United States is only exacerbating my petulance behind the wheel. Today I was running late, it was raining, and it was rush hour. It was really my own fault, too – which I firmly realized while driving - and was therefore a little bit more miffed with my own poor planning while I was behind the wheel. This is the setting in which I may have found a cure to at least one aspect of my boiling temper.

I had just picked up my oldest daughter from one after-school activity and was carting her to another. I was sitting in line waiting to make a left turn at an unregulated intersection; an intersection I have grown to loathe yet there is no reasonable alternative to using. The car in front of me, a Prius if it makes a difference, was attempting to make the turn and after what seemed like an eternity I saw a YUUUGE gap that easily could have been exploited by a geriatric Rascal pilot. However, an aging pilot of mobility scooters, the Prius-driver was not. The driver balked; I fumed and I then verbally expressed my assessment of the driver’s sexual proclivities. The proper term is “fellatio enthusiast” but I was not feeling very proper at the time and used the pejorative while channeling all the episodes of HBO’s Deadwood that I ever watched. I hit all the consonants hard – there were flecks of phlegm and spit bouncing around the inside of my mouth as I verbalized all my frustration in one unbroken and guttural stream of three syllables. All the frustration of 45 minutes of driving in rainy central Maryland during rush hour in one beautifully terrible word.

Apparently my commentary was felt within the confines of the car in front of me and the Prius pulled out and turned left. I gunned the engine, dropped the clutch and flew into the intersection to follow them and as I made the turn I felt a bitter satisfaction for a brief moment until… “What does [fellatio enthusiast] mean?” queried my beautiful and inquisitive 14-year-old daughter? A few thoughts immediately crashed through my mind. “Aiiiieeeyaiyaiiii”, “She’s in the car with me!” “She hasn’t learned that, yet?” “Public School education isn’t what it used to be,” and “I am a terrible father” were a few of them, not necessarily in that order. I immediately stumbled over my own tongue apologizing for my coarse and unbecoming language. I explained that it was an inappropriate way to refer to anyone and at no time should she use that word.

“But what does it mean?”

This was a hard question that was going to be answered, one way or another. My options ranged from “When two people love each other…” to “your mom when she’s drunk and I’m charming” but I settled for “It’s sexual” thinking it a diplomatic and effective way of shunting this conversation into a brick wall of awkwardness. And it was quiet. And I felt marginally better. And then she asked:

“Can I look it up on Google?”

Bullet Time is not what they show you in the movies. It is not a sudden 360° awareness of all things explody and dangerous going on around you. It is not the ability to see the quarks and gluons whiz past you in slow motion. It is not skin-tight leather-clad athletes masquerading as actors dodging what would normally be certain death by concussion and bleeding out. No, bullet time is visualizing your daughter ask her younger sisters to watch as she grabs a tablet and asks, “OK Google, define ‘[fellatio enthusiast]’”. The spinny cursor spins, the results drop down – complete with pictures because you haven’t ensured that ‘Safe Search’ is hard-wired into every browser ever created anywhere. Then the charming voice of not-Siri explains the intricate details of a person who enjoys what was best described to Sir Lancelot in Monty Python’s Search for the Holy Grail as “Oral Pleasure” to the eager ears of my all-too-sheltered daughters. And then, “Oh look! What’s Urban Dictionary?” This visualization takes the amount of time for the car to progress the distance of one dashed-center line at 45 miles an hour on the road between the Taekwondo gym and the dance studio. THAT is bullet time – the split second between when she asked if she could open Pandora’s Box and the time it took me to gasp, “Oh God, no. Please no, dear. It will ruin your childhood and you’ll be scarred for life. And it’s all my fault. No.”

Then the awkwardness started. The Awkwardness punctuated by the soothing sounds of the Christian radio station in the background reminding me that I am most definitely a sinner in need of forgiveness. The awkwardness where I once again got to contemplate exactly how terrible of a parent I am, and how a simple question of “Can I look it up on Google?” can shatter the illusion of a mundane rainy Tuesday afternoon drive when I can’t control my mouth and my anger. The awkwardness brought on by the realization that I now had no choice but to explain my vocabulary and have an unavoidable talk that didn’t need to be. Awkwardness and… laughter.

I laughed. Hard. She looked at me like had the object of a fellatio enthusiast’s affection growing from my forehead. “Why are you laughing? What’s so funny!?” as only a bewildered teenager can whine. And I laughed more as I tried to figure out the answer to that question. Shock? Traumatic response to stress? Or maybe relief. Relief that I had potentially found a cure for my foul mouth behind the wheel. Relief that perhaps this was the cure that all the disapproving stares from Jenn and strained silences from my kids couldn’t provide. A cure in the form of this blog post that my parents read that I instantly began formulating because self-inflicted public shame is how I deal with my own insufficiencies. I kept laughing up until we pulled into the parking lot of the dance studio and looked my daughter in the eye and said “It means someone who likes to suck on penises.” She blanched, jumped out of the car with her dance bag and ran up the stairs to dance rehearsal.

I drove home almost assured that there will be no Google searches for a day or two. Or maybe there will be. Maybe there will be another long talk later tonight and I’ll be reminded yet again why I need to calm down when I drive and be a good role model for my kids. Until I figure this out I’ve got one more reason to chill out behind the wheel. Because my kids have Google.

How I met your Mother, Part 1

So this is the story of how I met your mother. Unfortunately I am not as near as attractive as Neal Patrick Harris – which is fortunate for all my biological children. This is not a story book romance. This is more of a normal story about how a boy, completely encumbered by self-doubt, low self-esteem, and difficulty in fitting in with people found a girl who could look past all of that and hang out with him… and subsequently fall in love. It is not a short story at all since it has now encompassed 19 years. It was not easy, nor does it fit any sort of Hollywood mold. If this gets turned into a movie I am sure that many unbelievable turns of events will have to be added to make it palatable to the modern movie-going audience. But this is the real story. Note: I’m listening to T-Swizzle, who will always remain, in my sick twisted and completely stuck in outer space mind, as my next ex-wife. Because I’m broken. And my beautiful and wonderful wife still loves me. This is a love story.

In 1997 I was a student at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. I was tall, skinny, awkward, and relatively unmotivated. You see, I had failed out of college about a year prior, joined the Army, and ended up on the west coast of the United States. I had suffered through a relatively easy bout of basic training and wound up at DLI. I had maybe one or two people I called “friends” and I still don’t know if they considered me friends at the time. Now I think they do but since I haven’t seen either of them in person in a decade I can’t be sure. The lack of friends will be a recurring theme in this little narrative.

Unrelated to friends, I was struggling in language school. When I joined the Army I knew I was going to go to Monterey. I had done a tiny bit of research and chosen a job that I knew would bring me to Monterey but I had no clue what it would do for me. I wanted to learn Arabic or Russian and definitely not an Asian language. Due to my lack of planning, lack of research, and lack of anything that resembled the cognition associated with my desires I ended up learning Korean. When I found out that I was going to learn Korean I literally said, “Korea? We fought a war there once.” Yeah, I was ignorant. I was also less than diligent in my studies and despite my crush on my instructors (Ms. Moon and Ms. Choi I’m looking at you…) I was failing. Background: failing out of language school means that you become subject to “needs of the Army”. Somehow, despite my ignorance, I knew that I didn’t want to become subject to the needs of the Army – something about being a truck driver didn’t appeal to me (not that there is anything wrong with driving trucks for the Army, I just didn’t feel like I wanted to do that at the time). So, in order to avoid driving trucks for the Army I decided to… *gasp*… study. I also had designs on meeting a girl. Let’s talk about me and girls.

Me and girls weren’t really compatible. In high school I was rejected by over 13 girls… in a row. At Monterey I had equal success, although I was coming off a not-unsuccessful try at meeting and hanging out with a girl. I had met a nice Mormon girl who was out in Monterey for the summer but she had left the peninsula. She sent me cookies because she was truly a nice girl but that relationship wasn’t going anywhere because distances were hard for me – at the time. She was in Utah and I was in Monterey and there were many miles between us – and I didn’t have a car. Since I was stuck, and failing language school, I was kind of hoping that studying at the local coffee shop would raise my profile a bit and allow me to meet the girl of my dreams. Nothing attracts young, rich, beautiful women like a skinny, awkward, self-conscious man who lacks confidence quietly studying alone in the front of a coffee shop on a weekend in a city populated by old rich people. Right?

So there I was. Sipping my chai latte reading my Korean text books splitting my time between writing Korean phrases with poor syntax and furtively glancing around at the other patrons, of which there were none. A young Asian girl walked in and sat down on the other side of the coffee bar and I got a little bit of tightness in my chest. I knew she was Asian because I have eyes but I had no idea which flavor of Asian. Japanese? Chinese? Thai? Korean? A mix of one of those two? I had absolutely no idea so I continued to try and study but I was failing. Remember, I was a REALLY BAD STUDENT. Eventually the girl left her seat at her table and disappeared into the recesses of the bathroom. I knew this was my chance and I quickly spring into action as I walked past her table and noticed her hand lotion and a notebook. A gold mine, but not really. The only really important information that I garnered was that the hand lotion had Korean writing on it. Thanks DLI, you taught me to identify Hangul – what useful skill. That’s what $100,000+ worth of training will get you. In an uncharacteristically bold move I decided to act. I wrote what was probably the poorest worded offer to buy a cup of coffee that has ever been written in the history of the Korean language – and pick-up lines as a whole.

I was mortified. You see, my Midwest upbringing taught me that asking a girl if she wanted a cup of coffee was akin to asking her to conduct unspeakable sexual acts. I argued to myself between using the word “drink” or“coffee” for about minute. “Drink” could be misinterpreted to indicate something not exactly appropriate in a coffee shop, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember how to properly spell “coffee” in Hangul. If I was wrong I could accidentally write “nose blood”, and what kind of freak would offer a young presumably Korean girl a warm cup of bloody nose refuse. I opted for “drink” despite the *obvious* connotation toward sexual congress – such a pervert. I scribbled the note onto a post-it, stuck it on her notebook, and retreated to my window seat in the corner and desperately stared at my homework as she returned to her seat.

A note on the environment: There were three people in Plume’s Coffee Shop that day. Me, the Barista (or whatever they are called outside of Starbucks), and this as yet unidentified presumably Korean girl.

I was watching out of the corner of my eye as this girl sat down at her table, saw the post-it note, and got a distinct tightness in my chest as she looked up from her table and intently stared around the coffee shop, looking for the offending party that had clearly entertained the idea of anal sex via sticky note. With disdain evident in her voice she spoke to me in perfect English, “Did you write this?” My heart sank, I struggled to lower myself into the faux-wood tile of the restaurant. Surely she had to be talking to someone else – but that couldn’t possibly be true. She was talking to me and there was no denying it. I had offended this girl – the obvious resident of the peninsula. I had strived mightily to introduce myself and had brought shame and disgrace on my family, the entire history of the U.S. Army, all Soldiers past and present, and every man who has ever tried to make an introduction to a woman in a coffee shop ever. I was lower than low. I don’t remember what exactly I said in response but it was pitiful.

My Bootstraps

In fifth grade my primary teacher left for, I think, a week. I was pretty stoked because my teacher was a no-nonsense kind of woman who ran a fair but strict classroom. I wasn’t too keen on strict so a full week without her made the idea of going to school a little less horrifying than usual. There would be movies, and self-study time, and generally less schooling. Perhaps with the extra time I could work up the courage to finally talk to Sara Huotari… or not. But that was not to be. Our substitute teacher, Mrs. Johnson, was just as strict as my primary teacher and my primary teacher had left Mrs. Johnson a very detailed lesson plan which she intended to follow. However, I did not intend to follow that plan.

One of the things I have realized about my faulty brain is that sometimes I get an expectation in my head, however irrational, childish, or stupid, and I get fixated on it. I get ornery, I struggle, and I pitch a fit if I don’t get what I consider is owed to me. And in extreme cases I act out. (Note: As my wife knows, fifth grade Greg was only slightly less restrained than 38 year old Greg.) Since I felt it was my God-given right to slack off that week I raised hell in protest. I was disruptive, I was obstinate, I was the class clown, and I was downright cruel. I don’t know if I succeeded but I acted as if my goal was to get Mrs. Johnson to quit teaching. At the end of the week our primary teacher came back and with her came dread.

Later in life I really did get better. Sure, I dropped out of college and joined the Army at the lowest rank possible. Yes, my credit score was damn near the double digits at one point. Yes, I did leave the woman to whom I am now married for some very selfish and stupid reasons. But I made it out and now I am a relatively well-adjusted and successful father of four. I have been happily married for over 15 years. I’ve traveled the world, done lots of cool stuff, have some awesome kids, a nice house in the suburbs, and what appears to be a healthy set of life and career skills. I am also, in the words of Chad Kroeger, a leader of men and I also brew some pretty good beer.

Stop. Look back on that last sentence and count the number of times you read “I” “I’ve” or “my”. Check out all those accomplishments. Take all that into consideration and spend some time basking in my accomplishments. I was a poor, awkward kid from the middle of nowhere and look where I am now. Pretty impressive. (Those that have read certain of my other blog postings know that this is a very, very ham-fisted setup but sssssshhhhhh. Don’t spoil it for the n00bs.) In the words of Grace from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I am a “righteous dude.”

But I’m not, and that is the focus of today’s blog post.

Here is how it happened: My fifth grade teacher responded to my friend request on facebook so I finally got the opportunity to send her a note thanking her for being such a strict and wonderful teacher. As I was composing that letter in my head I realized that much of what I wanted to tell her was in line with what I wanted to tell a lot of people. To wit: I am where I am because of the care, concern, and hard work of multitudes of people. Some more than others. This is why I will never be able to write a self-help book. I can never honestly claim any sort of special wisdom or work ethic or “secret to my success” because all of the wisdom, hard work, and secrets came from all the people around me that took the significant amount of time to teach me how to not be an idiot. And it was a lot of time because holy crap I am dumb. So instead of just writing to her I am writing to you all in the hope that I will encourage you all (and myself) to be more like her.

Take care of the people around you. There are some kind of special morons that surround you on a daily basis and they most likely irritate the enamel off your teeth. Some are violently racist. Some are brutally ignorant. Some are just… awkward… really, really, painfully awkward. Awkward to the point that you feel all weird just being in the same room as them. Others are their own worst enemy and can’t seem to figure that out. I am asking you to reach out to them and try to help them. Teach them, or counsel them, or school them, or in the case of Gre… the awkward ones just be their friend and try to get them to be comfortable in their own skin.

But that is not easy. It is not easy to be the nice guy or girl. It is definitely not easy to be a teacher. Spending a lot of time with the lowest common denominators of the world seems like an almost complete waste of time. So much effort. So little short term payoff. Hell, so little visible payoff in any sort of realistic timeline. In the example of my fifth grade teacher she is just now, 29 years later, seeing her results. The time you spend with these people will be a short-term and mid-term loss and may very well be a complete loss. Because let’s face it: you may not help in the long run.

I say “try” for a reason. Unless you are an experienced teacher, a trained counselor, or a truly empathic and caring person you will mess up your efforts. You will do something wrong. You will be inadvertently hurtful yet say things with the best of intentions. And those things will rip the breath right out of the person you’re trying to help. You will accidentally tear off scabs you didn’t know exist. You will do all the wrong things and discourage someone from even trying to better themselves. You will completely botch everything, despite your best of intents. But you have to try because even if the person you are trying to help doesn’t show it, your work is appreciated. Plus, when you get it right it means more than you can possibly imagine to the person you’re trying to help.

Case in point: I just got a call from my oldest daughter. She is at dance camp and has been having a rough time of it. She didn’t get into the level she wanted, some of the other girls decided the movie “Mean Girls” was an instruction manual, and this is her first time away from home for any extended period of time. But tonight she was so happy it made me cry. One of her instructors was patient and kind and took the time to help the awkward kid with an attitude and a poor grasp of the English language. That teacher persevered and took the time to train the untrainable and tonight Lena was the happiest I think I ever heard her. The instructor told her she did a fantastic triple pirouette and complemented her dancing. The instructor probably doesn’t realize it but those words at this juncture in my daughter’s life were probably the most positively impactful things ever.

The instructor didn’t hear the joy in my daughter’s voice. She will never know how grateful I am as a father. That instructor may have been thinking about all the other girls who would be easier to teach. She is probably exhausted and getting paid shit wages at a summer camp and reevaluating her life choices. But right now that instructor and the time she spent with Lena are the single most important things in my daughter’s life.

It is people like that instructor – dozens, perhaps hundreds of them – that got me to where I am today. Those people are the proverbial bootstraps I pulled myself up with. Except they did the pulling. People like Bev Moye, my fifth grade teacher. The woman who took the time to put me in front of the class as an example of bad behavior, give me two weeks of after-school detention, call my parents and take the time and explain my actions and her decision, and then spend the two weeks of late nights after class watching over me and continuing to teach me.

Bev was one of many. Her example and the example of those like her encourage me every day to be a bit more patient and a bit more understanding when dealing with those around me. Be like Bev. Or be like my parents. Or like any number of other people that got me to where I am.

And now on a happier note…

A lot of times when I write the words that I put on the page stem from hardship and struggle. I use the process of writing to find the silver lining in a taxing situation; I use them to find hope. Today is not one of those days.

Yes, today was a taxing day at work and as soon as I got home I was bombarded with requests for help with homework by all of the children. The good news I saw right away was that Lena, despite my dreadful example of parenting I wrote about in my previous entry, was eager and willing to ask for help. This is a huge milestone for her since she is FIERCELY independent and stubborn and for the longest time would either hide the fact that she needed help, or refuse to ask for help even though it was obvious that she didn’t understand what was going on. This has been a pretty regular occurrence and even though it is a tremendous effort for me to stay calm and composed while teaching, I have been making a real effort at being compassionate and understanding – even showing empathy – with my teaching. And the results showed today.

Lena’s science teacher is fantastic and regularly sends her home with assignments that require my attention. He then follows up via email on the same day to make sure that his kids don’t conveniently “forget” to tell their parents and that parents have a REALLY hard time being “too busy” to check up on their kids. Additionally, if the kids do poorly on a quiz or test then he sends the homework home to get a signature and will give the kids 5 bonus points if the parents sign and date. Altogether it keeps me, the busy parent, involved in teaching, keeps the kids engaged, and helps foster discussions in households where the dad fancies himself a lay-scientist. And today Lena came home with a quiz that needed signing.

She was slightly nervous about showing me the quiz and I could tell she was REALLY hoping that I would simply sign and date the sheet and let her go. So of course I started asking her questions about the answers she got wrong and I gently (for once) and carefully (no, really) tried to find out where the disconnect in her work was. But even though I was being gentle, and empathic, and patient Lena began to get very upset. Now, when Lena gets upset it is not a loud and violent kind of thing. Instead she literally clams up and will only mumble one-word responses. This type of response normally causes me to blow up and storm out of the room. As soon as she started this I had one of my few moments of clarity and quietly explained to her, as gently as I could, that I had to step away. In the past when I’ve done this I have blamed her for it. “I’m stepping away because you are mumbling. Maybe when you quit mumbling I’ll try to teach you again, but remember that if I don’t it is YOUR FAULT.” Thankfully that was not the case today.

I still stepped away from her for some time but I promised her that I would return once I calmed down. I also encouraged her to take a break while I wrote her teacher for a little more insight into the matter. A quick email to her teacher and my suspicions were confirmed: Lena had messed up the instructions. However I held off telling her until I could regain my own teaching spirit and when I finally did sit down and explain Lena was very receptive. I honestly believe that she understood the nature of her mistake and that is the first step in not making the same one again.

And that’s it. A relatively small success in most eyes but for once I have a bit of a longer perspective and can see my and Lena’s tiny triumph and embrace it in the moment. There was a struggle but there was no yelling. We both got upset but we both took the time off we needed and came back to help solve the problem. I turned for help to her teacher, and she turned for help to her knitting needles to help come down off her angry place. 1 Corinthians 13:13 talks about faith, hope, and love. Today I saw that my faith and hope that Jesus can teach me to teach was rewarded with the patience necessary to teach from a loving heart instead of from an angry one. A happier note, indeed.

The Meanest Dad in the World

Today ended up being a pretty good day. I came home and was speaking with Lena about her day at school and I heard her speak and thought, "Wow, she speaks so well for a girl who has only been regularly speaking English for just over two years." During her retelling of today’s events she got on the subject of her English class and told me how she only got one answer wrong on her quiz about nouns, verbs, and adjectives. And I immediately felt a strange mixture of pride and guilt – pride that she did well on a second day of school pop quiz of something I didn’t think she could even pronounce (the word adjective. I’ve never heard her say it correctly and today she didn’t even pause in her story when saying that) much less identify among a list. And guilt because I’m pretty much the meanest dad in the world.

Those that know me well know that I regularly call myself “the meanest dad in the world” in jest when I make my kids do something awful like setting the table, emptying the dishwasher, and other times when I forbid them from drinking gallons of soda, playing in traffic, or jumping off the deck railing. But in this case I’m quite serious because while today ended on a good note it started off terribly. It started with a continuation of my and Lena’s battle from last night over homework. Again this morning I reminded Lena that all her stalling and sitting at her desk and staring at the paper “pretending to try” last night was for nothing. That if she had only done the simple task I asked her to do, summarize a note from her teacher – like I have showed her a hundred times, she could have spent the evening playing instead of sitting at her desk crying. If she would only try, instead of “try not to try” we wouldn’t have these kinds of fights. After our talk Lena stormed off teary-eyed to school but as angry as I was about Lena’s behavior I was proud of myself. Not once in all of my lecturing and ire did I raise my voice in anger, which is a new goal of mine. Success! But the problem with my attitude and my little speech is…

It’s complete and utter bullshit.

Lena lived in an orphanage until she was ten and we’ve come to find that what other parents who adopted older kids said is true: That each year a child spends in an orphanage can equate to two years of unlearning some of the socially-unacceptable, yet completely necessary for survival in a Lord of the Flies atmosphere, behaviors they developed there. And one of the behaviors that Lena learned was to stall until the teacher went away. However, I’ve discovered that whether that behavior was learned or just something that evolved from an undiagnosed learning disability Lena does not do this consciously. Again: Lena does not freeze up, become physically incapable of proper speech and unable to repeat even the simplest of sentences of her own free will. It has taken a while to wrap my head around this but it is true. This maddeningly frustrating behavior that causes both me and my wife to turn into unhinged lunatics is not from her conscious effort. The truly shameful thing about my actions with Lena is that I know full well that the problem is actually my approach since all her teachers seem to be able to educate her of things that I am clearly incapable (see that word “adjective”? Yeah…) without causing her to freeze up as happens with me. Despite my previous observations, my learned knowledge, my previous testing of this theory, my 15 years of formal pattern analysis experience, my 10 years of experience in leading all manner of Soldiers in all manner of situations, and 32 years of knowledge of the saving grace of Jesus… I still found it in my heart to berate, belittle, taunt, and chastise my daughter. Then I got a night of sleep to think about what I had done and come up with a way to apologize and do my job as a parent better. And then I woke up fresh this morning and berated, belittled, taunted, and chastised my daughter.

Again.

I am the meanest dad in the world and yet in my time of darkest self-hate and well-deserved self-flagellation I am reminded of Jesus’ compassion. I was adopted into Jesus’ family at the age of five and it took the requisite 2 years for each year of being an orphan for me to shed all my institutionalized behaviors. But by the age of 15 I was a model Christian and I’ve lived life beatifically and in the same manner of Christ ever since. I am always kind to the people around me, I help them, do kind things for them, love them unconditionally, and dispense wisdom when offering answers to their questions… except, of course, when I verbally assault my daughter.

And yet despite being shown the right way to be like Christ a hundred times, reading of His example a hundred times, and seeing Him modeled in others a hundred times, I still don’t get it. I daily fail miserably in every way imaginable – even with my own kids – yet Jesus does not berate, punish, or withhold grace from me. Furthermore He has never belittled me nor taunted me and has only gently chastised me in the most loving of ways. Jesus still loves me. In the 32 years since I’ve accepted the shocking fact that I am a sinner and that He died for my sins, Jesus has only heaped blessings upon me.

I was a poor kid from a farm town and He gave me a glorious house, in one of the most expensive areas, in one of the most expensive countries, in the world. I grew up a tongue-tied goofball, had a mullet until I was 19, and couldn’t get a date to save my life in high school (I believe there were 17 consecutive rejections at one point) yet He gave me this most beautiful and intelligent woman who after 14 years is still proud to call me “husband.” I sucked as a squad leader, platoon sergeant, got fired as a platoon leader, and almost left the Army but Jesus’ grace allowed me to work through my issues and make a comeback, do a fantastic job as a Commander and become respected by my peers, seniors, and most importantly my subordinates as a leader. And finally when I, at the age of 32, conflated the compassion, love, and grace of Jesus and the people that surrounded me with my own sense of self-accomplishment and told a father who was working three jobs in order to have enough money to earn a college degree that he should “just work harder and you can get to where I am”… Yes, I did... And Jesus still loved me enough to work through that completely unwarranted view of His gifts.

Then He blessed me with a desire to be more compassionate, more loving, and more graceful and to change. He encouraged me to truly empathize with those around me and then used me for a positive purpose. The biggest part of that transformation was my decision to adopt and even though I have admittedly and obviously mucked that all up on many occasions He still hasn’t treated me the way that I treated my daughter last night and this morning. He continues to shower down more love, more compassion, more empathy, more grace, and more forgiveness and for that I am forever grateful.

So this afternoon when Lena asked me to help her with her homework I told her no. As she stormed away I demanded that she return to me and obediently she did. As I realized that I was setting the wrong tone I paused… reflected… and started over. I started with the words, “I’m sorry,” and continued on to tell her that I was sorry because I truly was the meanest dad in the world and that it was absolutely not her fault. I explained that I’m not kind enough or compassionate enough to help her with her homework without being mean, and that is why I can't help her with her homework. Then I asked her to forgive me and because maybeI don’t completely suck as a dad, but definitely because Jesus still continues to bless me even though I don't deserve it, she did. And then she told me about her day and how in English…