Calling children by their full names

 We spent Thanksgiving this year with the family of one of our daughters. After dinner one night, one of her sons had a question for me.

He had noticed that all of the adults who know her address her by her first name, Kellie, except for me. I call her Kellie Jo, using both her first name and her middle name. He wanted to know why.

Hmm.

I think I gave him an adequate answer that night, but I have pondered on it ever since. I have often - not always, but often - called my children by their first and middle names. And I, myself, started to wonder why.

I got it figured out.

This week, my brother ran into a family friend from long ago - so long ago that they probably used to ride tricycles together. The boy's name was Greg. I have distinct memories of his mother yelling at him when he was in trouble, using his first and middle names: "Gregory Grant!" I heard it more than once. Sorry, Greg, I really didn't think you were that bad as a kid.

That reminded me of my own mother.  My mother was a great lady, but let's face it, she had anger-management issues. And when she yelled at us using our full names, we knew that she was really mad at us, or we were in deep trouble, or both. (And she didn't just use first and middle name, it was the whole enchilada.)

This next part of the story all happened in my subconscious. I admit that I have never given it any conscious thought. In fact, I didn't realize all of this until this week, when I put two and two (that is, "Kellie Jo" and "Gregory Grant!") together.

Subconsciously, I decided that I didn't want my own children to associate their names with an angry father, or with trouble. And besides, I was proud of the names we had given them.

So from the very start, I would address them using both their first and middle names. Not always, but often enough that it wasn't unusual.

Jason Daniel. Kellie Jo. Lori Dawn. Sandra Michelle. Christopher Michael (or "Chris Mike" for short).

 Whether it was a simple call to come to dinner, or a loving way to get their attention, or in the midst of playing a game or having fun, I would use both names. Over time (I hoped, subconsciously), they learned to associate their full names with love. And fun. And respect, and pride.

This many years later, when they hear their full name, I hope that it reminds them how much their father loves them.

Old patterns repeating themselves: life with daughters and granddaughters

I'm thinking that the circle of life is a double-loop. Or maybe a Möbius strip. See what you think.

I just spent a very enjoyable five days with my daughter, her husband, and their two children. They have a delightful little house in a friendly Italian-American neighborhood in the Land of Many People.

My sweet wife and I enjoyed their company - all of them. Even so, it seemed like I spent most of my time with my six-year-old granddaughter. We read books, played games, and roughhoused. We went to Subway for an early dinner, just the two of us. We drove into a nearby town to take a picture of a famous celebrity's bakery, and had fun getting lost on the way back. We played Rock Band and watched G-Force. She asked me countless questions, and my answers were either the straight, honest truth, or the biggest whoppers I've come up with yet.

As my daughter observed us, sometimes with a silent smile on her face, something powerful and magical happened - tangibly, repeatedly, and to both of us. While I was engaged in a tickle fight, or spinning another tall tale, or holding a small hand as we walked through an island park, for a few magical moments time looped back on itself. In an instant twenty-two years melted away, and we both saw me going through those same motions, not with my six-year-old granddaughter, but with my six-year-old daughter. She felt it, and I felt it: the subtle reverberation of two circles of time colliding and rubbing against each other.

I love my daughter deeply, and I admire her for the woman she has become and for what she has done with her life. It gratifies me to see her and her husband together, so in love with each other and so united in purpose and direction. Time and distance have conspired to keep her away from us, while we have seen her sisters and enjoyed their company much more often. These little flashback loops in the path of time helped me to recall the fun times we had together when she was younger.

And though it sounds clichéd to the point of inspiring nausea, these moments reassured me that this woman that I now admire will always be my little girl.

A Really, Truly, Empty Nest, Part 1: Crying Over an Old Blanket

UPDATE, 27 NOVEMBER 2022:

When I wrote this entry, I fully intended to follow up with a Part 2. I don't remember what Part 2 was supposed to be. However, I do have a Part 2 now. You can read it here: A New Quilt.

THE ORIGINAL ENTRY:

After school on Tuesday, we drove to Utah to move my lastborn son into his dormitory at Brigham Young University. Once he was moved in, he was off to play with his roommates without even so much as an "okay, bye." We had to hunt him down in his dorm room to get our good-bye hugs.

Please don't misinterpret me. I’m not complaining at all. It looks like we did it right again. We may actually go five for five on raising our kids right.

 We picked up our youngest daughter at the SLC airport on Wednesday night (from AZ, visiting a friend) and took her back to the airport on Thursday morning (to NC, visiting mission friends). Then we got onto I-80 and drove back to Colorado by ourselves, and we've been kind of in a daze since we got home. There are no kids here to worry about! For the first time in 30 years!

 Emotions are kind of confusing right now. We're mostly numb. My sweet wife got teary on the way to the airport Thursday morning, about something only tangentially related to the empty nest. She thought it was silly. I don't know what my daughter thought. I thought, "I'm sure lucky to be married to this woman."

 I got teary on Saturday morning. Wanna know what caused it? I know it's because of the empty nest, but that's not what caused it. It's even sillier than whatever caused Mama to cry. (No, this isn't a contest. I'm just being honest.)

 Before we got married, my fiancée made a quilt for me. It had mountains all over it. It was gorgeous. I loved it. I used it until we got married.

 My firstborn son appropriated that quilt at some point in his childhood, and it stayed on his bed until he left for the Air Force Academy. Then my lastborn son appropriated it, and it stayed on his bed until he left for BYU. I ended up sharing that quilt with my sons for 30 years.

There was magic in that quilt. Remember how it had mountains all over it? Well, by sharing the quilt with my sons, I also shared my love of the mountains with them. And as surely as the colors in the quilt faded over the years, my sons absorbed that love of the mountains and made it their own.

 Yesterday, Saturday morning, I was staring at that quilt sitting in the laundry basket where my lastborn had deposited it, and I realized that, faded and flattened though it might be, it was mine again. I thought about the fact that I had loaned one of my most precious possessions to my sons for 30 years, and never resented a minute of it. I would rather have shared it the way I did, than kept it and preserved it and never passed on that part of me to them.

And although it sounds silly now, that's the thought that made my tears start to flow.

Where my teaching skills came from

My father turns 75 on December 21. My sister, Susan, is throwing a 75th birthday party for him, and we six kids are supposed to write a memory of Dad and read it aloud at his party. We're supposed to keep it to one page in length.

Hmm. I tried to think of the most significant memory of my father, something I can write a full page about. I decided to start by writing down all the significant memories I could think of, and ended up with a full page of ideas. I still don't know what to write about.

However, one thing stood out from the list. Check out these memories:

• sitting in the car in the grocery store parking lot, waiting for my mother, and him teaching me how to to tie a square knot.
• teaching me how to ride a bicycle - and a horse
• teaching my brothers and me how to make scrambled eggs
• teaching us how to make red onion sandwiches on toast
• teaching me how to make bread pudding from the crusts we trimmed off the sacrament bread
• teaching me how to drive a stick shift
• taking advantage of everyday "teaching moments" to teach a wide variety of unforgettable lessons
• lamenting, as I prepared to go to college, that he had spent 17 years trying to teach me to work hard, and that once I finally learned the principle, I left home
• teaching me how to teach

Um, do you see a theme there? And then see how the theme wraps around on itself in that last point? Yeah. I always thought that I learned how to teach from Boyd K. Packer, one of the best professional teachers I've ever known. But as I squint and look at things more closely, I find that all of the skills and talents that have made me a great teacher originated with my father. Who knew?

Dan Fogelberg, a native Colorado musician, wrote a song about his father, also a musician. The chorus ends with these words:

My life has been a poor attempt

to imitate the man

I'm just a living legacy

to the leader of the band.

If you talk about teaching instead of music, that's me.