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.

On Giving Away Children in Marriage

I have five children. Three of them are now married.

The first marriage was that of my second child, my first daughter. She married rather young by today's standards. She married a great guy, and we had a reception in a large pavilion on his parents' acreage, in the foothills of the Rockies, and as the sun went down the pavilion glowed with the light of thousands of white Christmas lights. I am told that I danced with my daughter once during the night, but I don't remember that. I do remember that I ran around being a gracious host and enjoying the company of friends and family, and not eating or drinking much. At the end of the night, after the bride and groom had driven away and our helpers were starting to clean up, I sat down at a table all by myself in the semi-dark and quietly worked my way through one piece of chocolate cake.

People have told me that that was one of the saddest things they have ever seen. I believe them. She had been gone less than an hour, and my heart already hurt from missing her.

The second marriage was that of my oldest son, who had endured six miserable years and deserved some happiness. His bride had endured a miserable life and she deserved some happiness, too. Her family either couldn't afford or wouldn't pay for the reception, so we put it on ourselves and paid for the entire thing. I did the gracious host thing again, as did my sweet wife, my son and his bride. At the end of the night, after they left in a stretch limousine filled with pizza and root beer, and our helpers were starting to clean up, I took my sweet wife on the dance floor. The sound system was already packed up and put away. We slow-danced for a long time to the music in our minds, glad to have each other to cling to.

The third marriage, ironically, was once again that of my oldest son. The story is too long to tell here, but his first shot at "happily ever after" was neither "happily" nor "ever after," but after a couple of years he met another girl. He and she were both doing okay financially, so they put on their own party, on the shores of Pensacola Bay. We were their guests, for the most part, and they had a fun time hosting their families and their friends as we celebrated "happily ever after" again. I did my part by looking good in a tux and toasting the bride and groom with "scomps." I can't remember what we did after their party, but I think it involved more partying with family and relatives. We didn't have to clean up anything.

And that takes us to this weekend, when my third child, my middle daughter, married the love of her life, at age 28. As I watched her work the room on Saturday night, I admired the gracious and confident woman that she is. I broke down during the daddy-daughter dance, stopped dancing and just hugged her, whispering words of love in her ear and getting my tears in her hair. But we were surrounded with good friends and good family from Wednesday through Sunday. With the festivities came a distinct euphoria that I was not aware of until this morning, when I finally came down from it. I had been feeling great all weekend long, like everything was right in the world. This morning, on my way to work, I felt a heavy sadness. It was so bad that I had to stop at Dazbog Coffee to pick up a cup of comfort food: their amazing hot chocolate with a double shot of cinnamon, and cream on the top.

We have two more to go: one, our fourth child and youngest daughter in less than three months, and number five, our youngest son. He's off the market for two years, and I won't try to predict what happens after that.

(Parenthetical note: We have dozens of adopted children. One of them is a girl who became as close to us as one of our real daughters. In fact, she came this close to becoming a daughter-in-law. That got short-circuited, though, as she met the real love of her life. Her love for us, and our place in her life, were made clear when she invited us to participate in all of her wedding festivities alongside her real parents. I won't pretend to be equal to her real father, who is a close friend of mine, but I will admit to having felt the same strange emotions that I have felt as I have given my other children away.)

Cell-Phone Funny

Today I'm going to post a link to another blog. I like reading this blog because the entries are always thoughtful, sometimes deep, and a combination of angst-ridden, pragmatic and humorous that works for me. The author writes about her life, past and present, good and bad, with a candor and a style that are rare among writers today. I wish I knew this author in person. We'd probably be good friends.

Today's blog entry is about a trip to the T-mobile store with a bored six-year-old in tow, in order to replace a 20-year-old cellphone. When she finally got around to leaving, she collected her son, who had been playing with all of the demo phones in an effort to relieve his boredom - and on her way out the door, she noticed his face looking back at her from every one of those demo phones.

Go read it, and enjoy the rest of the story.

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.

"Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them"

Can I just say how much I love my children?

This morning, as my youngest child headed out the door for school, I stood at the open window and barked goodbye to him. Yes, really. It's a family tradition, which started when our dog was just a puppy and would bark like crazy whenever anybody entered, exited, or walked past our home. It's a way of saying "Goodbye, I love you, have a good day, I'll miss you, come home safe."

As he opened the car door, my son looked up, grinned, and barked back at me. We kept it going for a good 30 seconds. In those 30 seconds, my mind flashed back 12 years, to when I had a similar conversation with my oldest son, and then in an instant I remembered all the fun morning rituals I have shared with my daughters as well.

I've been especially blessed in this life to be a father, not only to my five biological offspring, but also to their friends, their classmates and teammates, and now their spouses; to my nieces and nephews; and to many of my Boy Scouts and my students over the years. I treasure these relationships more than any Italian villa or stock portfolio. And the ones I treasure the most are the ones I share with my own sons and daughters.

The psalmist said, "Children are an heritage of the Lord ... happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them." If that's the measure of happiness, then I'm happy.