Ethan Metzger and Brainwashing

Being Watched, Motivation, & Growth

My son watches me.  He does.  In fact, it’s become one of the most haunting and motivating parts of being a father.

I didn’t grow up with my father at home.  And I still struggle getting to know my dad.  His distance, with him living in Arkansas now, makes it harder.  Our shared temperament for quietness at best and disinterest at worse makes it nearly impossible.  So we’ve been building what we can with occasional visits and regular phone calls.  I don’t see him, but I do see my son up close.

I’ve noticed how he, simply, pays attention to me.  He does this less and less, but his interest is still there.  He’s interested in other people, picking up details on life and living from a dozen places and people a day.

I remember how when he was really small, when we clicked him in the infant carrier, before he was too long to fit, I would turn around to check that he was breathing.  I was nervous.  I was afraid that I’d drive too fast for his lungs to catch up.  So I drove slowly, and I turned around to ensure that his head was moving, his eyes open.

Bryce Over My Shoulder

One day I turned around and saw him doing what he’s doing in this picture.  I snapped it at a red light.  I had turned to look and he was staring.  I jerked, thrown off.  I said something aloud like “He’s looking at me.”  We were in the car alone, probably going to get his grandmother from home to bring her back to our place.  When I turned around at the light, he was still steadily seeing my shoulders.  He watched my head, the arm from my glasses, the profile of his father.

It launched me into a spiritual experience, and not the kind I enjoy.  That stare made me conscious, technically self-conscious.  Those almond eyes had a love in them that left me with a thousand questions.  The questions have motivated me.  Together, his watching me, the questions I’ve “heard” in his stare, make me want to grow.

It’s funny because I’m a pastor.  I’m pretty sensitive to growth, especially in others.  I’m not completely unaware of the topic.  But I had to admit then–and, often, still–that I’m less aware of the reasons to grow until moments like the one behind this picture.  Even as a Christian.  Even as a preacher.  The fact is I care less about God.  I mean that literally.  I care more about this kid.  I care more about screwing up so daily that he conceives of life is a twisted way.  I care more about doing something well so that he can see accomplishment and fruit and benefits.

Somewhere in my head I tell myself that God will get along well if I mess things up, that God might even show mercy to me.  Of course, that is a motivating message in my ears.  But it also makes me less vigilant.  With my son, with my family, and with the people I love, they might not be so merciful with their glances.  They just might expect me to live up to things.  Indeed, they do, and just like my son’s stare, like his current habit of repeating exactly what I say, they make me want to live well.  Or, at least, better.  …I really have to watch what I say to cab drivers in the loop.

Good Memories, pt 1

As I said yesterday, these posts will focus on my scrambled thoughts as I remember good memories from our vacation.  I’m writing toward a new practice, a habit of paying attention to good things rather than my most natural tendency to hold to the bad.  Most of these memories will be good, though there are a few not-so-pleasant moments littered through the last two weeks.

The point of the post today, for you who like points to posts, is to plan a vacation.  Or a getaway.  Or a break.  Or a series of dates.  Or a significant time away from normal life.  The getaway, break, or vacation will give you an opportunity to nurture your marriage.  Of course, you could do this with a friendship or a significant relationship with some modification too.

I’m somewhat of a planner.  And traveling is important to me.  I like to do it.  You could say that I value it.  We started planning this last vacation a couple years back.

Before we had a baby, before Dawn got pregnant, we talked about how we wanted to celebrate our tenth year anniversary.  We wanted to do something big.  We wanted to stretch ourselves, save up, and have a grand time.  We couldn’t do what we really wanted which was to copy some friends who a few years ago spent a month on a different continent.  But we could stretch.  So we talked about what we wanted to do, and even though a little boy got made and delivered since those first conversations, we committed to acknowledge, in some way, that we were a we.  That we existed as a married couple.  That we were together.  To be honest, we had our challenges conceiving, and affirming who we were outside of the parenting thing nourished us in ways that we haven’t always seen.  So we determined to go on a cruise.

We’ve cruised before, done what I call the local cruises, the popular one to the Caribbean.  We cruised the year I graduated from seminary, too, because that was my gift to myself after getting another masters degree!  We also decided, in planning this last vacation, that we wanted to return to an early desire to see Italy.  I had a dream when we were engaged at 22 years-old that we’d honeymoon in Italy.  I was young.  I was, in a word, foolish, on many fronts.  I thought about a lot of things for us, but I didn’t think that going to Italy at 23 years-old when you had a mortgage and a construction project called a fixer upper was impossible.  It didn’t become possible in those early years either really.  So we took smaller trips.  We saw family.  We drove to many places.  We went on those ships that I mentioned and saw the Caribbean and parts of Mexico.  I used honorariums from speaking engagements and payments from work-for-hire contracts to make sure we were traveling together.  One reason why we got married young was so we could see the world together, so we saw what we could.

When we planned this time, it was a similar experience.  I started saving money, even though we couldn’t really afford it.  We were blessed.  I cut up portions of my second and third incomes–income that I never count until I have a contract–because my primary income is restricted to relatively fixed expenses and giving.  We agreed on an itinerary, a mix of France and mostly Italy with enough Spain to keep us interested.

Dawn started looking into logistics.  We struggled, waiting for the best time slot.  Back then, Dawn was considering school.  I had a small frame between my supervisor’s sabbatical and the start of my next calendar year in the VFCL program at GETS.  We waited as late as we could because my coworker’s decision wasn’t exactly made.  I knew when my teaching responsibilities would start.  We really could only go at a particular time because of both calendars.  Dawn looked at flight plans after I came up with a window of dates.  She reserved and purchased our tickets.

We decided easily that the boy was staying when the cruise line said he would cost the same amount of money we would.  We thought they were joking.  They weren’t.  We struggled with the matter of leaving him–for about two minutes.  I mean, we are a couple and this was our anniversary celebration.  We are not alone as a couple anymore so we were thinking that including the boy wouldn’t be all wrong.  And yet there was this voice of wisdom speaking.  Why not find a way, if it was possible, to leave the kid.  To leave him and to remember that we were separate from him.  To say our goodbyes and to have that be some shared meaning between me and the wife.  Of course, we are parents and that reality is hard to get away from.  But we are something else, a reality that’s easier to lose sight of as a couple.  Everyday we attend to him, naturally and necessarily, but there is this other thing called a relationship which needs attention too.

We met with our mothers about staying at our home one week apiece, and I texted a few people to secure supplemental childcare.  The week before we left, I went grocery shopping.  I picked up enough apple sauce and wipes and diapers to last for a month.  Just in case, you know, we couldn’t get back.  In case we decided not to come back.  I washed all the clothes in the house.  Dawn bought her textbook and read her first week’s readings.  I finished two contracts so I wouldn’t have them hanging over my head.  I looked over the syllabus for the fall semester and thought through what September would be like.  I did as much work as I could at the church to leave things well and in the hands of my colleagues.  I had a few more meetings than I thought wise.

We talked to friends about Barcelona and France and Italy.  Alan told us about the architecture in Barcelona, leaving me mad that we weren’t just going there.  His eyes widened when he spoke, and he relived days where he ate bread and salami while sitting in a park in front of some building.  I imagined him drooling while he ate in that park, though he wasn’t drooling exactly as he told his stories.  We ate with Libby and Omar who helped us figure out what to see if we only had so much time, which was true, because it was a cruise and not a land-based trip.  Libby wrote up a three-page cheat sheet and sent it to Dawn.  She gave us more direction than any guidebook.  She gave us guidebooks too!  Omar told me to wear a fanny pack to keep our euros hidden from people pick-pocketing.  I refused.  I told Dawn that I’d simply wear my I-grew-up-on-the-south-side-of-Chicago face.  It seemed to worked.

I wrote up the first draft of the cheat sheet we intended to leave our grandmothers and to our friends.  We left explicit instructions to call us only when the boy was hospitalized since calls to the ship would be $10/minute.  We had full confidence that Bryce would cooperate and not injure himself.  We packed.  We dreamed.  We talked about what we wanted to see, where we wanted to go.  We did something that a counselor I worked with during the early years in our marriage called “planning a future together.”

It’s a powerful thing to plan and map out your future.  Of course, you make vows to a spouse about a vague future, but planning it is a second strategic step.  It adds to the vow or the pledge the particular means and the specific steps.  We were doing very romantic and relationship-strengthening work: looking at those next tomorrows and saying how we, together, would face them.  Before us was a delightful series of dates.  They included easy travels, long lines which we greeted with smiles and gladness, and a lot of words we didn’t understand.  Those tomorrows included sumptuous meals and great servers and questionable taxi drivers.  It would be wonderful, a little messy, slightly nerve-wrecking, and glorious.

For Fathers & People Who Love Them

Tomorrow I’m launching a second blog.  I will continue to ramble about faith, writing, and relationships on this blog.  But the second blog will be for fathers and the people who love them.  I’ll share stories about parenting and focus on the skills that fathers and parents need, the interior life as a father, and the moments of grace I’m experiencing as a father.  That last part will also still get some coverage on this blog, though the posts for Intersections will be explicitly about my faith and how fatherhood is relating to, renovating, or enriching me spiritually.

Of course, I’m a man of faith whatever blog I’m writing on, so you should expect to see glimpses or full-scale shows of faith and grace on both blogs.  If you’re interested in these father-related topics, or you know someone who is, the address is forfathers.wordpress.com.  I’d love to have you or that person you know visit the blog.

The second thing about tomorrow I’d like to mention is that you should read about modern slavery in America over at the Root.  It summarizes Juneteenth, what it is, and how we should look at and respond to issues of slavery today.

Being Late

The other day I dropped my son off to Maggie’s.  She had consented to watch him for a few hours before one of the Grands picked him up.  When I got to the Swansons’ place, I was rushing.  We were late.  The boy delayed matters that morning.

He wasn’t as interested in eating breakfast as I expected him to be.  His little lips closed when I offered his cereal.  He, of course, didn’t obey when I told him to eat.  At least not right away.  He sat, taking me in, figuring me out.  I saw his little mind working, wondering why I was glancing at the clock, why I was rushing his meal.  I saw his brain turning, thinking how futile my anxiety was.  The boy already knew that we, and I, were late.  And he had no problem with lateness.  He had no place to be except where he was.  It became a little lesson for me.

So, there was me saying “Come here” to him.  “Come put on your coat.”  There was him looking at me, standing still in the doorway.  There was the bottle to grab so he could drink when he arrived at the Swansons.  There was the pacifer to put in the bag.  Did I remember that?  Even though he was officially off the thing, Dawn reintroduced it last week since he was sick.  I disagreed.  He didn’t need the mouth stop in my view, but sometimes I go along with other people’s programs.  There was the coat to put on.  I needed to bring the stroller.  Grannie would walk him home.  I forgot the spare set of keys.

When I got to Maggie’s, it was too early to greet her.  I think I grunted.  A thin layer of sweat always pops across my forehead when I’m late.  I hate being late.  Almost as much as I hate being yelled at.  I have a thing about time.  The boy doesn’t get that.  He was waiting in the strapped seat for me.  I pulled the stuff out of the trunk.  I got him.  Maggie was great, always is.  When I ran through answers to her questions, I sounded quick.  She knew I was late because I told her I was going to be there 2o something minutes before that moment.  Maggie probably laughed inside, amused that I still don’t quite get how being a parent leaves you perpetually unable to schedule yourself well.  It’s a loss.

I turned to leave.  I heard Bryce wailing.  Maggie picked him up.  He’s aware of what it means when he’s at the Swansons’ or at one of the Grands’ homes.  He knew I was leaving.  He yelled.  I turned, hearing and not hearing, thinking about my appointment and how late I was going to be.  When I got to the car, I wondered if it would matter to me later on in his development that he no longer cried when I left.  I wondered if it will bother me as much then as it did that morning because I was late, that I was off schedule, that I had something to be rearranged.  It probably won’t.  I’ll probably cry one day that the boy doesn’t care that I’m here or anywhere, and I’ll probably miss those tears I tasted when I kissed him goodbye in Maggie’s arms.