Month: August 2020

Jean and I worked together.  She was secretary, bookkeeper, receptionist, and Girl-Friday.  Bright and cheerful.  Hard-working and creative.  Enthusiastic, quick to laugh, a team player, and totally forgiving of my shortcomings as a boss.  She was the heartbeat of our office.

She had this habit of taking in stray kittens – of the student kind.  It was commonplace to see her ensconced in her cubby with a teenage girl, providing whatever was needed at the time – a Kleenex, a shoulder, a hug, a dollar for a cup of tater tots, or just some good-old, down-home, earth-mother advice.  She also had this habit of saying, “Praise the Lord anyhow.”  All day long!  In any situations, good or bad!

The state of my spiritual life at that time was dormant.  Raised on church and schooled on Sunday clear through high school, in college — and for several years after — I had put it on the shelf.  Frankly, the daylong mantra of this hard-core, church-going Christian woman was rather annoying.

However, as the story of her life unfolded before me, I was amazed at her ability to stay upbeat, because most people in her circumstances would have crumbled.  She had this inner strength that kept her coming back disaster upon disaster.  Her kindness and compassion for others in the face of Job-like challenges was simply astounding.  When asked about it, she cheerfully replied, “I just praise the Lord anyhow.”  I got over my initial annoyance because whatever she was leaning on was obviously reliable.      

Her husband died tragically at a young age and left her with two preteen daughters, which brought her back into the workplace and into my life.  Then she met and later married this fellow who was the father of three girls, so again she went home, and for good.  So sad to lose her as a colleague, I was happy for her and her new life.

Over the years we bumped into each other or called each other from time to time, and some of those years have been tough on her.  Yet whenever we spoke, she had this peaceful and positive attitude; and she has never abandoned her Source.  She has always managed to praise the Lord anyhow.   

When she remarried and became the mother of five girls, she longed for another baby.  She wanted his, hers and theirs.  Soon enough she and her husband were blessed with a bouncing baby boy.  You can imagine how that kid was loved on, fussed over, and fought over with five doting older sister-mommies, right up until he was two years old and they found him face down in the neighbor’s pool.

All day and all night and for the next two years they fought to keep him alive.  There were tubes and shunts and surgeries.  There were clinics, ER’s, IV’s, and hospital beds from here to Philadelphia.  All the other two and three and four-year-olds went to pre-school and played in the sandbox; but John-John’s playground had green walls, and his playmates wore masks and scut-clothes and poked him with needles.

This saga was faithfully chronicled in the local press, and the community sent checks and made sandwiches and prayed and wept over the story of this brave little guy.  He had good days and bad.  He had victories and just as many defeats.  Eventually his little body could take it no more, and he died at the age of four.  The time and money that went into that vigil took its toll.  Their marriage did not survive.

Not long after, an electrical short caused a fire that did thousands of dollars in damage to her house.  How could a person take it?

We met up at a restaurant for lunch.

“How are you?”

Instead of the pain and rancor of divorce, she talked about the personal and spiritual growth in her life.  Instead of complaining about the smoke and the ashes, she spoke with delight about new carpeting and drapes and flooring.  Although she couldn’t hold back the tears over the loss of her child, she spoke of the outpouring from God and the church and neighbors and a village of strangers who had read of her plight and reached out to her with generosity and comfort.    

She had to leave because she had a date.  I wondered if she was still in the business of taking home stray kittens of the human kind.  Would someone take advantage of the enormity of her heart?  Would she suffer additional heartache?  If so, she would wear her pain with grace and continue to do what she had always done.  As she skipped away, she turned and said cheerfully, “Praise the Lord anyhow.”

My annoyance had turned to acceptance, and to admiration, and to emulation.  Jean was a key player — one of the people who paved the way for my re-entry into life of faith.  She found joy in the midst of turmoil and tragedy.  She always demonstrated an important Biblical principle that is expounded in the first chapter of the Book of James.  No matter the hardship, no matter the news, no matter the inconvenience, no matter the loss, no matter the cancer, no matter the circumstance!  Each one is an opportunity to grow in empathy for the pain of others and to grow in the knowledge of God. 

When I was a little kid, my older brothers knew how to stop me from crying.  They asked me this simple question: “Are you laughing or crying?”  And while repeatedly asking the question, they did “schtick.”  I would start to giggle, because they were very funny; but the tears had not completely dried up, and for a few seconds I would be laughing and crying at the same time, ping-ponging back and forth between “boo-hoo” and “ha-ha.”

That feeling of laughing and crying at the same time — of mixing tears of joy with tears of sorrow — returned to me in the days following the death of my father.  There was gut-wrenching grief, but there was also a measure of comfort that his long and painful struggle with cancer had come to an end.  There was such relief and such release that at times a lightheartedness overtook us.  At no time did this feel in any way disloyal to Dad because he had an abiding sense of humor and often found the funny when the going was the toughest.  

My mother decided to stay with my family for a few days, and we shared memories of Ted.  We would start out maudlin, sobbing one minute; then one of us would remember an anecdote about Dad or relate one of the stories from his repertoire, and we would descend into stand-up.    

One moment we were passing the Kleenex, and in the next moment my mom was repeating the joke that my dad had told about a woman whose husband had died.  She gave to the mortician her husband’s best blue suit, in which she wanted him to be buried.  The mortician apologized, saying it was impossible, because her husband had died in a brown suit, and rigor mortis had already set in.  The woman wailed and insisted, and the mortician said he would do what he could.  When she came to the viewing, her husband was laid out in the coffin, resplendent in a blue suit.  The widow was delirious with gratitude.  The mortician said it worked out because another man died the same day in a blue suit, and his wife wanted him buried in a brown one.  They just switched their heads.

I could SO hear my dad.

Mom and I could be sobbing on each other’s shoulders one minute and giddy the next; but we felt the pressure to put on a straight face, because it was time to visit the mortuary to finalize funeral arrangements and pick out a coffin.

The coffin room was in the basement, dimly lit with a low ceiling, and the attendant spoke in the hushed and reverential tones that are reserved for the lately bereaved. There were about a dozen coffins in the room, and these floor samples were wildly different.  Two or three were simple and unadorned, but many of them were over the top, gaudy and garish.  They were festooned with expensive brass fittings or fuzzy, felt-like exteriors, or expensive inlays, or completely clad in copper.  One-half of the lid was raised on each one so you could see the interior.

On top of each one was a little sign with the price of the box, which included a list of “extras” if you wanted to pay for the “memorial service package.” It all seemed pricey for something that would be buried forever, and it made you wonder if the price of the coffin was a measure of how much you loved the dearly departed.  The little sign also read, “All major credit cards accepted.” 

There was one coffin that was very high-end with burnished chrome on the outside and tuck-and-roll satin upholstery on the inside.  It could have been confused with a shiny new ’56 Cadillac convertible, fins and all. 

“Hey Mom.  Check out this beauty.”

She came over, took one look, and without missing a beat, said,

“Your dad wouldn’t be caught dead in that thing.”

We laughed out loud, right there in the coffin store; and Ted would have said, “Good one, Audrey.” 

My dad’s needs were simple, and his demands were few.  In the end we picked the one he would have preferred – the budget box of polished wood.   

The funeral service was appropriately somber, especially when our friend Mary Lou played keyboard and her friend sang “How Great Thou Art,” my dad’s favorite hymn.  The solemnity of the High Mass had us all on simmer, but when my brothers and I and our wives and our mom all piled into the same stretch limo for the drive to the cemetery, the morose disappeared.

Anything we saw, everything we uttered, and every single thought for the next 15 minutes turned to laughter. Here we were filling the limo with laughter, while mourners in the following cars were no doubt dabbing their eyes; that made us laugh even more. The driver of the limo, our family friend Jack the Mortician, was giving us the fisheye, and that made us laugh even more. The fact that we were giggling and not crying made us laugh even more.

When we arrived at the cemetery, people poured out of their cars.  We stumbled around that big pile of dirt and gathered at the gravesite under a spreading oak tree; but someone was missing – the priest.  Father Jack was a longtime family friend who drove from Los Angeles to officiate at the mass; but why wasn’t he at the graveside?  We waited, and waited, and waited.  No Jack.  We finally rounded up a substitute priest and carried on.  Now everyone was chuckling, not just the family.  Where the heck was Jack?  Ted would have laughed at that for sure.   

What happened next sobered everyone up.  My dad was a 17-year-old kid in the year 1917 when he enlisted in the Army and was shipped to the fields of France as a “Doughboy” in World War One.  Because of that, he was accorded full military honors.  Three soldiers were there, two of whom displayed the Stars and Stripes, while the other played “Taps.” If there is anything more mournful than the soft blare of a bugle floating over the gravestones, I am yet to hear it.  They folded the flag into a neat triangle and one of the soldiers knelt before my mom.      

“This flag is presented to you, Mrs. Piatt, in honor of your husband’s service to his country.”

He placed the flag in her lap.  Then he stood and saluted.

Audrey hugged that flag to her chest and bawled uncontrollably.  That was the moment when the full weight of her loss sank in, and that was the real and honest beginning of her grief.

By the time we returned to the house, Audrey had composed herself, but she was still clutching the flag.  Someone cracked open the champagne and the wake began.  It had always struck me as odd that you would end the funeral with a party, but not anymore.  I can think of nothing better to do than to celebrate someone’s life.  For two or three hours we frowned a little less because he was gone, and we smiled a little more because we knew him.  We enjoyed some grape, hugged one another, cried some, laughed as much, and all agreed that Ted would have loved his own funeral.

But what about Jack?  We had told him that the burial was at Sacred Heart Cemetery, and he said he knew how to get there.  But what we did not know, and what Jack did not know, was that there are two cemeteries with the same name.  He drove to the one in Los Angeles, while we were waiting at the one in Pomona. 

We laughed at Jack’s expense.  We laughed that we stood at a graveside, waiting for a priest.  We laughed even harder that — at the same time — there was a priest wandering around a graveyard, looking for a funeral.

Oh, how Ted would have loved it! 

Note:

“Doughboy” was the nickname given to grunts in World War One. The nickname “G.I.” is from World War Two, when every single item from a tin of Spam to a Sherman tank was stencil-stamped “Government Issue,” or “G.I.”

Dad:               Good night, Darlin’.

Daughter:     G’night, Daddy.

Dad:               I love you, Darlin’.

Daughter:     I love you more, Daddy.

Dad:               Well, I love you down the hallway and through the kitchen and into the dining room and by the living room and back down the hallway and back into your bed, and more.

Daughter:     I love you more than that.  I love you down the hall and the kitchen and the dining room and the living room and out the front door and down to the mailbox and back inside again and down the hall and into bed, and that’s how much I love you.  More.  More. 

Dad:               More than that, huh?  Well, I love you down the driveway and down and around the cul-de-sac and back home again.  How ‘bout that?

Daughter:     I still love you more.  I love you down the street and three times around the block and up the hill and real fast down the hill and all the way back home and right back here.  That’s how much more!

Dad:               More, huh?  Ha!  I love you into the car and past the library and clear to the school and through the park and all the way back home again and into your beddy-bye.

Daughter:     Still love you more.  I love you back into the car and over the hill and through some meadows and to the zoo and all the animals and all the way to Grammy’s house and back home again.

Dad:               Hold on!  I love you into the car again and over two freeways and through the valley and over to the airport and up into the sky and over to Phoenix and into a taxi and up to Dammy and Grandfather’s house and the doggies and the swimming pool and all the way back home again.

Daughter:     Oh Dad.  I still love you more. I love you down to the airport again and up into the sky again and clear across a hundred hours to Boston and New Hampshire and to the lake and the canoes and the dining hall and the ice cream and the loons at night and all the way across the country again and back into bed.  More.  More.  More.

Dad:               Not more than this!  I love you all the way down the hall and the kitchen and the living room and  the driveway and the mailbox and the cul-de-sac and the hill and the library and the airports and Grammy’s house and Dammy’s pool and the zoo and all the animals and Squam Lake and all the loons and jetting down to Florida and to the Space Center and into a rocket ship and up beyond the sky and about one hundred and fifteen times around the earth and splash down in the Pacific Ocean and get picked up by a helicopter and put in a chauffeured limousine and back into our house and back down the hall and back in the sack.  Whew! I love you more, more, more!

Daughter:     WOW, Dad.  That’s a lot, Dad.  G’night, Dad.

Dad:               Good night, Darlin’.

Daughter:     Hey, Dad?

Dad:               Yeah?

Daughter:     I love you more.                     

A Love Letter to Liza

Saturday afternoon. October 1966. Claremont, California. 

The day we met! 

Growing tired of the study carrel in the library, I wandered down to the stadium where our fierce Fighting Sagehens of Pomona College were facing off against the Occidental Tigers.  Fall was in the air, sweater weather.  Some students still had the sweaters thrown over their shoulders with the sleeves tied in a loose knot across the chest – the uniform of the day. 

I ran into my dear alumni friends, Don and John, back on campus to celebrate Homecoming Weekend.  They were standing with Linda and Nancy, current seniors and their affianced.  With them was this other girl.

“Tim, this is Liza Bean.”

“Liza, this is Tim Piatt.”

How do these things work?  What chemical or electrical impulses go off like fireworks, causing your brain to explode, causing your pulse to accelerate to Mach Four, causing your heart to meltdown?  All I know is that the punch in the chest started with: “Nice to meet you, too.”     

Years later at our reunions, these friends of ours would remember that moment, because of the way we ignored everyone and everything around us … and stared at each other.  And I remember that moment, because of the way we ignored everyone and everything around us … and stared at each other. 

At class the following Tuesday, Linda sat down next to me and asked, “Sooo, what did you think about Liza?”  That was the only thing I had done for four days – think about Liza.  While I was wondering if your desire to hear from me was as strong as my eagerness to call you, your co-conspirator Linda gave me your number.  You told me later that you ran the cord under your dorm room door and left your phone in the hallway with a note:  “If a guy named Tim calls, PLEASE tell him to call the front desk,” where you were working the evening shift on the switchboard. 

As we began our dating dance, we drove along Foothill Boulevard, and the aroma of the blossoms was intoxicating.  I told you about the groves in my life – my granddad’s avocados and the oranges that surrounded our house when I was just a little kid.

You told me of the considerable ribbing you took over your name.  Oh, how you wished your family had held on to the name of your ancestral Scottish clan, and you could have been Liz McBain instead of Liza Bean.  But right from the first, you were a rose by any name to me, and not in name only. 

We had been dating about two weeks when I went to my brother’s law office and told him I had met THE GIRL I was going to marry.  You came to dinner with my brothers, their wives, their kids, and our parents.  They teased you and it was bedlam, and you loved it.  They loved you from the start, and you found the welcome embrace of another family – a family whose name you would take, into whose tree you would be grafted, and all of whom love you still. 

You told me about being governor of Girls State, and how you informed your father that you were the most important girl in all of Arizona.  You have been living that down for years, but you are still and always my most important girl.

We shared our exchange-student stories about France, spoke in French, went to the Village Theater to see Les Parapluies de Cherbourg; and afterwards, we danced in the street.  We went to The Huddle, where we closed the joint, dancing to the music of Teddy Buckner and his band.  We went to Disneyland, took the cruise on the Mark Twain riverboat, and slow danced to sweet and plaintive jazz, played by the elegant black octogenarians known as the “Young Men of New Orleans.”   

The dance has been lovely, Liza, for fifty-two years. 

Years ago, there was a TV offering of classic films every Saturday night called “The Fabulous 52.”  Fifty-two weeks a year of the best of movies.  Fifty-two weeks a year — for the last fifty-two years — of the best of wives.    

Fabulous 52 indeed!  Happy 52^nd Anniversary.

August 17, 2020

Love you!  Love, Me!             

From time immemorial there has been a thing in American schools called a “dress code.”  In the student handbooks there are lists of DOs and DON’Ts.  Historically the rules were strict and numerous; but it didn’t matter how many rules you had, you still could not anticipate all of the emerging fads and fashion statements from pop stars and athletes, whose sartorial choices were widely adopted by the student population.  Nobody has ever liked the dress code. 

#1       Kids hate it.  They see their wardrobe and grooming choices as personal expression, their free speech, their identities – and not just as individuals, but as groups as well.  The skaters, the bikers, the jocks, the goths, the soshes, the hippies, the band kids, the choir kids, the drama kids, the regular kids, and all the other sub-cultures on campus have their uniforms, all of which have unique challenges to the dress code.     

#2       Teachers hate it.  Every staff member is to uphold the dress code, and report violators to the office; but they do not always agree.  Students quickly figure out which teachers could not care less what they wear to class and which teachers are dress code hawks

#3       Parents hate it.  Some think the rules are just stupid – not the school’s business!  Other parents want to support the school, which means that shopping with their kids for back-to-school clothes can become a battleground.  And what no parent wants is to get a phone call at work about skirts too short, hair too long, inappropriate words or pictures on shirts, or bare midriffs.  Never.  Ever.  Ever.         

#4       Administrators hate it.  It is a nightmare to enforce, the push back is constant, and at the end of day, they do not want to spend their time there. 

As we are all aware, changes have taken place.  Numerous lawsuits challenged the legality and the inconsistent applications of the rules.  As a result, dress codes have been altered, or gutted, or in some places have disappeared altogether.

But they still exist, and whatever form they take, the rules need to be enforced, and that is where my friend Joe came in.  He was an assistant principal in charge of “student discipline” — the “hard guy.”  He had a tender heart for kids, and it pained him to deal out consequences; but he had a job to do, which he did with diligence. 

Joe was a man of keen intelligence, a shrewd observer of student life, and something of a philosopher.  He was a mentor and shared a couple of keen observations, learned in his many years in the education business, and which had direct application to the business of the dress code.  Once he said to me, “Timothy, my lad, the revolution takes place at the point of the law.  They don’t destroy it; they eat away at it.”

For example, back in the day, if the code called for “dresses below the knee,” girls came to school with their hems just above the knee.  And when the rule was relaxed to the “top of the knee,” there came the miniskirts.  When the hair rule was “to the collar,” the boys wore it to the shoulder.  The rules became simpler and fewer in number.  After a few years there was not much in the way of rules for student dress; except that the State of California required footwear, and with that kids went barefoot.  Finally, the collective view among educators was, “Please wear something!”  That was the dawn of the “Streaker Era.”

But for all the rule changes in all the dress codes in all the schools from coast to coast, there has always been the one rule that never goes away and always leads to confusion, resentment, and unfairness.  You can never have enough regulations to address every possible infraction, so there is the catchall phrase, the omnibus rule in the handbook which reads, “Students are not to dress in a manner that may be disruptive to the educational process.”

Joe did amaze me with his clear headedness, his kindness, his equanimity, and his uncanny ability to salve the feelings of angry students and their parents.  But there was that one day!

The girl was sent to the office by her math teacher, and Joe pronounced her appearance disruptive.  She was in bare feet, wearing loose bib overalls, no shirt, and the skimpiest under garment.  Her pulchritude was on display, and Joe really berated her and said that she was making a disgrace of herself.  Told her how inappropriate she was and that her mother would have to take her home.  She burst into tears.  He called the mom and told her to come right down.  The mom was aghast and apologetic, saying that when she sent her daughter out the door that morning, she looked fine.  “What had happened”?  

While waiting for the mother to arrive, Joe rehearsed in his head what he would tell her.  When the intercom beeped to announce that the mother was there, he collected his notes and his thoughts.  The mother came in with a fury toward her daughter, then looked at the daughter, and then turned to stare at Joe with a quizzical expression.  As Joe stared back at the mother, and then again at the daughter, he was seeing double.  Mom was dressed just like the daughter.   Bare feet.  Bib overalls.  No shirt.  Skimpy bra.   

He told me later that the mom gave him an earful, but in the end, she was gracious as he uncomfortably explained the perceived violation of the dress code.  He also imported to me another gem of wisdom on school life: “Timothy, my lad, the apple surely does not fall far from the tree.”

Note

This topic of what to wear to school may seem completely irrelevant as our kids and grandkids prepare for distance learning, because they may in great numbers attend class at home in their PJ’s.  We will not be dealing with bare midriffs.  But when they return to campus, we will have a new dress code issue, which is what reminded me this week of my late friend, Joe. 

Masks!

Already there are sides being drawn.  For the sake of my grandsons, students everywhere, my former colleagues, dedicated teachers all over, and all of us at home; I pray fervently that everyone will put aside personal considerations and make this one dress code rule a thoroughly expected practice.        

At my dad’s retirement party, a longtime colleague and crony named Harry came up to him and asked, “So Teddy, what are you going to do now?”  And Ted answered, “I’m going home.”  Ted really was a homebody.  Others wanted to get out, jet off to Europe, see the Grand Canyon, play golf, experience the things they missed along the way.

Not Ted.

He just wanted to spend his retirement continuing to do the same simple things that granted him pleasure.  He visited the grandkids; they could always count on him to have a ‘nilla wafer in his pocket.  He puttered a bit.  He did most of the shopping and the cooking, and the dinners he prepared were like his approach to retirement – simple.  Ham and limas.  Baked beans with a hunk of salt pork.  Day-long spaghetti sauce, always with the addition of a 5-oz can of Las Palmas red chili sauce for a little extra “bite.”  He listened to the Dodgers while he was making his pies and cakes from scratch, and he took three or four naps a day.

Yes, when Ted retired, he went home and stayed there.  He wanted to live and die there.  Neither Harry nor anyone else realized just how much he loved being home; and no one knew just how prophetic Ted’s parting shot was when he said, “I’m going home.”

It was not long after the retirement party that a regular checkup revealed a new cancer diagnosis.  He had fought quite a battle ten years before.  He lost his larynx and his voice.  He lost most of his neck and half a shoulder.  Several surgeries and some powerful chemical therapies seemed to chase the cancers, and he learned to talk again with esophageal speech and returned to work.  It was a clean bill of health at that time, but the cancer had only gone into hiding.

It took Ted a year and a half to die.  My mother was his ministering angel.  She had no medical training, but she was committed to his wishes to be at home.  She seemed to float through those days of his agony without complaint and a will to do whatever she could to make his departure as peaceful as possible.  She did it because Ted wanted to die at home.

It wasn’t long before they started him on chemotherapy once again.  In those days the drugs were nearly as bad as the cancer.  His hair fell out.  He was violently nauseous at times.  He lost weight.  They said he should be in the hospital, but Audrey was steadfast because she wanted what he wanted — and he wanted to die at home. 

As the cancer invaded his lower intestinal tract and colon, they dragged him in for more surgery.  Father Casady sat with Ted to pray and share the rosary and came out saying, “God is good, and Ted is tough.”  Ted came home from the hospital with a bag on his side and more pain in his belly, defying the practitioners who wanted to keep him in the hospital.  After all, he wanted to die at home. 

To give Mom a break from the vigil, one of my brothers or I would come to help him in and out of the tub or just sit and read to him.  We read him the sports page and stories by Damon Runyon, which brought a welcome smile to his face.  His favorite poem was the “The Incredible One Horse Shay” about a buggy whose time is up.  We could see him fading almost daily, and there were days when it seemed right to give ourselves a break and put Dad in the hospital.  But he wasn’t ready to give up just yet and he wanted, by God, to die at home.

In this time of pain and weariness, when a pall hung over the house, there were some lovely moments that stick with me.  One day I dropped by and found my mom sitting at my dad’s bedside, and they were sharing a beer.  That was a bit shocking, because for years Audrey had gone on search and destroy missions for hidden bottles of cheap wine — my dad’s preferred form of oblivion when he was on a bender.  But that hardly mattered anymore, because Ted’s time was short, he was bed-ridden, and for all the destruction it caused, cancer was the catalyst that slaked my dad’s commanding thirst for alcohol.  Ted and Audrey, just like anybody else, sipping on a long neck.

My dad reached up with a frail hand and patted my mom on the cheek.  She had been a loyal and loving wife for 44 years, sticking with him through some tough times.  A simple pat on the cheek expressed what he could no longer utter, because he was too tired to swallow enough air to burp up even a single word.  I felt like an intruder but was grateful for that moment.

Yet an even greater moment of privilege for me came just a few days later.  Mom had reached the end of her strength, and Dad needed more than we could provide.  He couldn’t lift his head off the pillow, and the catheter wasn’t working.  It was time for professional care.  Dad did not want anything to do with a hospital room and all the attendant tubings, but he was able to understand the need.  We called the doctor who ordered the ambulance.

Mom and I decided to take Dad to the ambulance.  I picked him up.  He could not have weighed more than seventy pounds; but before I got to the front door, he seemed to get heavier and heavier.  You know that feeling, when you are holding a little one and she falls into a deep sleep in your arms.  As if she gained ten or fifteen pounds on the spot!  It is called dead weight.  Ted died in the doorway in my arms.   

That moment came back to me on the Fourth of July, prompted by an article about John Adams and Thomas Jefferson who died on the same day, July 4, 1826.  What power of determination drove them to give it up on the exact same day, fifty years to the day from the signing of the Declaration of Independence?  It was more than an astounding historical coincidence.  They willed themselves to last that long, to make that landmark date, each one wondering until the end if he had outlived the other. 

Ted went home, just like he said.     

I spent over forty years in the education business, in the classroom and later in school administration, working every day with other people’s children.  When you do that, you catch a lot of colds and you catch a lot of excuses.  The colds are not so bad.  One day a student comes in with a handkerchief and sneezes on you.  You spend a day or two at home, but it’s seasonal.

Excuses, on the other hand, are year ‘round.  Some kids make a career of giving you reasons not to do the work.  For them it is an art form.  There are the wailers who tell you half their lives, and about the important family events and the visiting aunt from out-of-town last night. Won’t it be OK to hand it in tomorrow?  There are the future farmers whose goat ate it, and there are the future barristers who spend time trying to convince you that the problem was your lack of clarity on the assignment.

Plus, there are the forgetfulness excuses: I forgot … to write down the assignment … to do it … to bring it to school … to hand it in.  And there are time excuses:  I had to go to my job and had to work late … We had a game last night … The library was closed by the time I got there …

Many teachers listen to excuses.  You don’t want to be unfair.  You don’t want to be uncool.  You spend time and energy listening and judging.  You take on a responsibility that belongs to the student, and not to you.  Early on I was like that.

Then Jonathon came into my life.  He was a senior, taking my history class.  He was a good kid, likeable and friendly, and a big kid who played football and wrestled. He was a good athlete, but sports did not consume his life. 

Nor did his schoolwork. In the classroom he was laid back. He showed up almost all the time, caused no trouble, and did enough work to get the job done.  He didn’t burden himself with an overwhelming sense of industry.  He was a “B” student with the occasional “C” who could have pulled straight “A’s” if it had been important to him.  In that regard he belonged to the Great American Academic Majority.

He was like a thousand other kids whom you probably won’t remember. But I do remember Jonathon, and vividly so, because there was something unique about him. He never made excuses.  To him it was a form of lying, which he abhorred.                      

Me:      Jonathon, where is your homework?

Him:    Oh, I decided not to do it last night.

Me:      Jonathon, it appears you didn’t study for this quiz.

Him:    No, I chose to take my girlfriend to the movies instead.

One day when he returned from an absence, I asked him where he had been.  He answered, “Well, next week is Senior Ditch Day.  Yesterday I rehearsed.”

Another morning he appeared in the Attendance Office and handed in his note.  It read: “Yesterday I went to the beach.  The weather was great.  Please let me know what my consequence is.  Sincerely, Jonathon.”

He never asked you to bend the rules, nor begged for mercy. Nor was he ever rude or disrespectful.  He did not fail to do his work so often as get into academic peril — maybe four or five times a semester — and not on the big assignments.

You have heard it said that teachers learn from their students.  I learned a valuable lesson from Jonathon. He changed my whole line of thought.  He taught me something of great value for a classroom teacher, a parent, or anyone else who has some responsibility for the care of others.  He opened my eyes to see that there is no such thing as an excuse.  There is only a choice.  No excuses!  Just choices! 

It is so much easier when the burden of responsibility for the assignment is on the student, rather than the teacher.  When I finally stopped accepting excuses and tightened up on the deadlines, the same kids got the same grades as before; they just handed the work in earlier.

After Jonathon, if a student approached me with a sniffle and no homework, and began to offer an explanation, I would interrupt with, “Please don’t give me your cold, or your excuse.”

Over the years I developed an immunity to both.

All moms and dads have a saturation point in terms of numbers of children, beyond which they can go crackers.  You occasionally run into the parents of nine or ten offspring who seem to have all patience.  Then you meet the parents of a single child who could quote Clint Eastwood’s avatar Dirty Harry Callahan, who eloquently summed up parenthood: “A man‘s gotta know his limitations.”

My wife and I decided that for financial, emotional, and other reasons our limit was two.  We came to that conclusion before our third daughter was one week old, and we experienced all over again the thrill of not sleeping through the night.  The big difference being, we were turning forty. 

Of course, we did not think about sending her back — not seriously, and definitely not recently!

We would not be trying for a son, but that was not a big disappointment, honestly wanting a girl every time.  After all, I had been the youngest of three boys, always yearning for a sister.  The thought of little girls running around the house was delightful. 

It was thrilling when Wendy was born.  I behaved as if I had invented childbirth, crowing and cooing, bragging until my friends and neighbors crossed the street when they saw me coming, and embarrassing my wife by taking rolls of film of her nursing our firstborn for the first time.

Before Wendy was one month old, my excitement drove me to the keyboard and a detailed chronicle: remembering the Lamaze lessons, babying out the nursery, our midnight trip to Kaiser, labor and delivery, and how we felt about all this.  It ran to forty pages, and copies were sent to the immediate and extended family and many others, whether they asked or not.  The picture taking continued unabated.  The annual Christmas photo album that year was huge.

I loved every step.  Every first step, every single step, every kind of step.  Every crawling, walking, running, new-word, candle-on-the-cake, mark-on-the-door-jamb, up-on-dad’s shoulder, scraped-knee, kissing-the-owie, falling-asleep-on-dad’s-chest … all those steps.  You know what I mean.  The wonder of it all! We asked ourselves, “How can we match this?”

Then Annie was born. 

How different she was from her sister.  In utero, Wendy rolled around.  Annie did jumping jacks.  When Wendy was nursing and the milk would not come right away, she would fuss a little.  Annie would make a little fist and pound on the container, just the way you would slap a vending machine if it ate your dollar and didn’t give you a Pepsi.

Wendy strolled and skipped; Annie ran.  Wendy read; Annie fluttered the pages and made up stories of her own.  Wendy was a string quartet; Annie was a brass band.  We didn’t take as many pictures the second time around and her story was eighteen pages, but the wonder of it was the same.  We said to ourselves, “The perfect nuclear family, two kids and a dog.”

Then along came Emily.

She was as different from her sisters as they were from each other.  Annie’s early drawings were representational; Emily’s were “music in the air.”  Wendy wanted to postpone “lights out” with stories about Princess Wendymere and her adventures; Emily wanted all the songs from a different “musical” every night.  Her sisters tended to live in the here and now, but Emily woke up in new world every day.  Yet she brought the same wonder — that wonder when your child flops against you and throws her arms around your neck, and you pat her, and she pats your shoulders in return.

Emily’s story was a page and a half.  That caused me to worry if she needed an apology for the brevity of my account of her birth.  Now that she has three boisterous sons, five and under, she gets it.  She barely has time to sleep, let alone write.   

With each pregnancy, friends would ask if I was hoping for a son this time, and the conversation often centered on father-son bonding over sports.  I never pined for a son, but I did get my sports fix.  Oh, how I loved those summer evenings under the streetlamps when Wendy and I played catch; she later played left field on the school softball team.  Oh, how I treasured Annie’s great determination in track and field as she challenged herself with hurdles and the pole vault.  Emily detested sports.  But oh, how I geeked out on opera with a passion equal to her love of “Bring Him Home” and “Un Bel Di.”

They are grown now, but the wonder has not disappeared.  The wonder now is the special relationship with adult children.  The wonder now is the loving attention they give their mom and dad.  The wonder now is the cherished sisterhood they share.  The wonder now is the passion they share for their art, the passion they share for social justice, the passion for the good and altruistic work they do.  They astound me.

I will write of these amazing women in future blogs, probably providing some embarrassment to them from the quill of a proud papa.  I am grateful to be surrounded by these incredible, interesting women — my wife and my three daughters.