Making the point now

Earlier this week, when I dropped off Jadyn at daycare, a young man she fancies (yes at 4) was in the classroom with her waiting to eat breakfast. She was wearing a new jacket and she wanted him to notice. She called him by name and wanted him to see it. I don't think he was paying attention. As I was preparing to walk out the door to go to work, it registered with me - she wanted him to notice and he didn't, at least not that I saw.
I had plenty of time, so I went back in, hugged her from behind and told her: "You're beautiful and I love you."
I can't be there every time she asked someone to notice, but when I can, I want to remind her that her father genuinely and deeply loves her and wants her to always remember that, especially as she develops a relationship with Christ.
What significant point do you want to make to a loved one, and how do you hope to go about doing it?

Connection without face-time (in most cases)

Over the past year, Amanda and I have gotten to know many people around the United States and a few in other parts of the world through our online connections.
We feel connected to them in some ways more easily and directly sometimes even more than people we've met in person. Why? Because of the conversations we've had on Twitter, e-mail and other forms of electronic communication.
I've been in one particular group of people who share a common background and I feel more comfortable with them than I do with some in-person friends because they are right there with me on this specific issue - they've thought the same things and fought the same battles in their hearts. We are kindred even though we haven't all met in person. We share life and we're as far as 600 miles away.
We've even gotten to know people on the other side of the world and chatted via video or through instant message, just sharing what's on our hearts or minds at the moment.
So, we have family we haven't met in person yet and we're glad to have the bigger, broader definition of family active in our lives.

A Healing Journey - Part I

Over the last several weeks, I've wondered if it would ever stop raining.
We've experienced a few dry days interspersed with biblical downpours. The hope is these rains will taper off and we'll return to standard weather patterns.
Nearly two months ago – near the beginning of this damp spell – I set off on a journey, driven to find a relief similar to the one we seek for these recent rainy conditions.
For many years, I've struggled to find a way out from under a blanket of memories and patterns left over from my interaction with my deceased parents. To this day, I find myself twisting and shifting to remove myself from a straitjacket of old patterns and habits constructed for relationships which ended – for this lifetime – at a community cemetery in Alabama.
I haven't been sure this cloud would ever lift.
As the 11th anniversary of my mother's death approached, I realized something a few weeks before the day arrived – this year's anniversary would fall exactly on the date and day of the week she died.
Instead of taking the time to grieve, I chose instead to dive headlong into the circumstances we faced immediately afterward, deferring actual mourning to an undetermined date and leaving these old habits clinging to me like a leftover dryer sheet.
So, as the calendar rolled toward Sept. 5, I realized doing something on this day would be a good chance to gain some distance from these remnants of a life now gone.
I decided to go to the place where it all should have stopped – the graveside.
As I got ready to leave for the cemetery from Mississippi, I had this sense one of the things I'd be attempting to stare down is the fear of loss, a fear which can cripple someone and prevent even the most calculated risks.
I put on “The Extremist” by Joe Satriani as I confronted cloudy conditions on the first few minutes of the ride. This music – with its sweeping motions from charging and electrifying to simple and emotive – provided a great soundtrack for the first leg of the trip.
As I proceeded, I thought about whether the clouds I'd encountered along the way would ever break, or if would be just as bleak or worse if I'd even make it to the cemetery at all.

The Maximum Vacation, Part IX

Day 8 – evening

Later we went out to eat and did some clothes shopping. Pennsylvania has no sales tax on clothing, so we took advantage of that, given that in some locales in the South, people pay around 10 percent in sales tax on everything.
Here, Jadyn sports a set of sunglasses Mommy got her during our whirlwind shopping trip in the humongous Tanger Outlet Center.

Day 9

We got up, packed up and directed our car toward our first stop of the trip – our friends’ house – to drop off a borrowed item and wave one last time goodbye.
We checked out a few of the places of importance to Amanda and her side of the family in the area she grew up in, then pulled out the directions for the car rental office at the Philadelphia airport.
We turned in our car, got inside the airport and did all the necessary check-in stuff. We got aboard the plane with the plan of getting to Memphis – and then Birmingham – in just a few hours.
This plan didn’t materialize.
Our plane started to taxi out, but the air crew realized that a panel was open on the aircraft. So, we went back to the gate to have it shut. Then, several passengers wanted to get off the aircraft because they knew they would miss their connections in Memphis.
While we waited on them to decide what they wanted to do, we burned fuel, so we had to get more gas.
What started out as a planned two-hour flight to Memphis ended in the reality of us staying on the aircraft a total of four hours. When we arrived in Memphis, our plane to Birmingham had already been gone about 20 minutes. Outbound flights were done for the day.
We didn’t make it home the night of Day 9 like we’d hoped we would. Instead we stayed in a hotel – paid for, of course, by the airline responsible for the delay.

Day 10

We made it back to the Memphis airport in decent time to catch our flight to Birmingham, which arrived without any glitches. Seeing the family vehicle waiting in the parking deck at BIA was quite a welcome sight. We loaded up and started our already delayed journey back to Mississippi.
Our delay gave us an opportunity to interact with people we wouldn’t have gotten to know better otherwise, including a person we initially met in Philadelphia. We never completely know why something happens, we can only trust it was for someone’s benefit.
We got home with about 90 minutes to spare before Amanda went to a previously scheduled event and have been pretty much on the go since.

Epilogue

Our journey into the Northern United States helped us remember some of the more important things in life. These all involve relationship – with friends, family and community. Sometimes, the bonds of trust and togetherness are forged in a flash; trust comes immediately to engage what lies ahead.
Other times, they come into being by reconnection, taking extended amounts of time simply to sit and chat in a day and age when time seems impossible to find.
Spending quality time with friends and family is no waste of time.
Neither is extending a hand of friendship and support to a stranger you wind up stuck with on a layover at a hotel.
All of these things come by making a choice – and we’re glad we chose to take the Maximum Vacation of 2008.

The Maximum Vacation, Part VIII

Day 8 – morning

With all of us working on varying amounts of limited sleep, we got up to go to Dutch Wonderland, a theme park in walking distance from our hotel.
This was Jadyn’s first amusement park experience, and overall, she had a blast.
She loved her first ride, which moves along at a decent pace then slams into high gear.
First, here I am getting her set up for the ride.

The smile says it all.

She wasn't too wild about this spinning one.

She did OK on this ride, which climbs to heights above our heads.

The good ol' carousel worked fine. However ...

Jadyn wanted to see someone who passed by while we were on the ride, and once we were off, she literally ran down Duke the dragon to meet him.

Right after lunch, I went back to the hotel for a nap, while Amanda and Jadyn hung out with a college friend of Amanda’s and her daughter and stayed until about mid-afternoon.
I’ll save the roundup for the evening on the next – and final – blog about the Maximum Vacation.

The Maximum Vacation, Part VII

Day 7 - afternoon and evening

After lunch, we made our way east on the Pennsylvania Turnpike to Route (U.S. Highway) 522, where our trip took a mostly northern heading toward the first day of the 30^th annual Creation Music Festival just south of Mt. Union, Pa.
Though we hadn’t placed this stop on our original itinerary, we thought it would be a good addition, both to spend time with our first-stop hosts and experience something we wouldn’t often get a chance to do. Plus, Amanda has fond memories of previous visits to the festival and got a chance to make some new ones.
We made our way through the entrance and to the parking area, then met up with our hosts.
We heard a speaker, ate some great festival food and saw several musical acts, including the David Crowder Band.
Jadyn figured out not long into our stop how to relax.

She also accurately determined the conditions we faced were quite warm, so she drank water.

This is mostly likely the biggest crowd Jadyn’s ever been in before, but she took to it very well.

She danced and had a good time ...

and so did we. We’re very grateful our hosts graciously allowed us to join them.
We continued on our original path toward the Lancaster, Pa. area, seemingly outrunning – and then getting caught by – a thunderstorm which appeared to follow us a good bit of the way to the east.
We got into Lancaster in the early hours of Day 8 on our trip, and we hurriedly got to bed so we could follow Day 8’s schedule as soon as possible.

The Maximum Vacation, Part VI

Day 7 - morning and early afternoon

We rolled out reasonably early from our hotel in Parkersburg, W. Va. without another thought in mind not to go to the first originally scheduled destination on our trip – the Flight 93 Memorial near Shanksville, Pa.
We essentially took the path we followed in to Parkersburg on Day 3 in reverse until we got to the Route (U.S. Highway) 219 North exit off Interstate 68 in Maryland, then made our way back into the Keystone State.
Here is a farmhouse along the way.

This is a sight we don’t see much of in the South – power-generating windmills.

We eventually found our way to the memorial, which is loaded with items left behind by visitors. Here are two photos illustrating the variety of things people decide to leave.

Amanda listened to the National Parks Service person as she told the basic story about Flight 93 – one of four aircraft hijacked on Sept. 11, 2001.
On this flight, people found out about the World Trade Center attacks and understood that this aircraft was part of the plan. Passengers and crew attempted a counterattack to retake the aircraft. Somehow and for some reason, the plane crashed into the patch of ground behind this fence marked with an American flag.

Officials believe the hijackers intended to fly the aircraft directly into either the White House or the nation’s Capitol. In other words, the steps the counter-attackers took prevented an already tragic day from getting much, much worse. To call them “heroes” is the right thing to do and so is honoring their sacrifices.
Amanda and I decided without speaking to each other that we needed to leave something behind.
Amanda wrote a message on the hat.

Then, Jadyn and I placed my favorite baseball cap on a little spot on the fence which makes up part of the temporary memorial.
May we long remember what the passengers and crew of Flight 93 did for our nation and its people.

After about a 45-50 minute stay at the memorial, we loaded back up, ate lunch in nearby Somerset, Pa. and headed for our next major stop on Day 7, which we’ll detail in the next post.

The Maximum Vacation, Part V

Day 6

We'd already planned this day as a low-key one, with a stop with Jadyn specifically in mind.
In the morning, we went back into Marietta, this time to visit the city's Aquatic Center, which is basically a miniature water theme park. It's an excellent, affordable facility and a perfect thing for a child like Jadyn, who loves to play in the water.

After toweling off a bit, we went back to the hotel for another afternoon nap. Then we went to dinner with a cousin and later, took one last trip through Grand Central Mall, buying a few interesting items and letting Jadyn burn off a little steam.

As we began to pack and prepare to leave the Marietta-Parkersburg area, we wondered whether we could manage what we'd planned for Day 7. So, we gave ourselves several options and decided we would see which one could play out the next morning.
I anticipate two posts out of Day 7, if that tells you anything! I expect they'll be along within the next few days.

The Maximum Vacation, Part IV

Day 5

I'd been to Marietta, Ohio three times in my life previously - sometime between 1977 and '79, December 1984 and May 1990. This was Amanda and Jadyn's first trip.
It is one of the ancestral points of origin on my mother's side of the family.
As we headed north out of Parkersburg on Interstate 77 into Ohio, a moderately thick blanket of fog obscured our view of the mighty Ohio River.
We made our way to Old Town Bakery, a relatively new addition to downtown Marietta. One of my cousins owns and operates it and it was our designated rendezvous point with my other cousin. (The photo in the link is from a person by the name of Bob Church who posted the link at this site.)
We met up with my cousin, got some very good breakfast, then took a driving tour of Marietta with my cousin at the wheel.
She took us up to an overlook, where the fog began to peel back and let the daylight shine.
Here are a couple of other pictures taken at the overlook.


My cousin drove us back down off the bluff and then on to other parts of the area, including segments of the heart of Marietta.
The image I take away from this most recent visit to Marietta is that it's a city that's proud of and rooted in its history yet it keeps its mind on the present and future. I see it as a progressive community with a bike and walking trail tied into downtown and recreation areas on the north side of town and a former covered - and later railroad - bridge reverted to pedestrian traffic about 46 years ago.
We strolled across this bridge to explore another side of town and take a look out on the point where the Muskingum and Ohio rivers merge.
Community members adorned the bridge with hanging baskets of flowers, adding a very nice touch to an already scenic path.


We discovered a cluster of various shops on the west side of the river, including this antique store with a clever name:


We went back to the hotel in Parkersburg - about a 20-minute drive - to give Jadyn a chance to nap before a gathering back at my cousin's house on the outskirts of Marietta later in the afternoon.
We enjoyed a great meal and some warm and genuine interaction with our relatives - I just don't think it could have gone better. Jadyn mostly just played in the dirt and hung out with cousins closer to her age.
By this day, neither Amanda nor I contracted pinkeye, and we truly enjoyed our time reconnecting with this segment of our broader network of kin.
By the end of Day 5, our senses of uncertainty on Day 3 gave way to a mixture of feelings belonging, connection and satisfaction. In other words, we had a great time!
We have five more days to recap, so please hang on as I get the blogs together!

The Maximum Vacation, Part III

Day 4

The night before, we already thought we needed some recovery time and postponed a meeting with a cousin of mine. That was before we stayed up late trying to do research on what could be a serious situation.
The next morning, we called Jadyn's physician's office back in Mississippi and spoke to a staff member, who arranged for us to get some medicine called into a local pharmacy to treat the condition.
We were told the best way to prevent the spread of pinkeye was to keep our hands washed.
After a while, we decided to venture out and find dining and play around Parkersburg, and we found enough of all of it to suit us.
We took these pictures at City Park in Parkersburg.

Amanda snapped the cool one with Jadyn's feet in the air.
A little while later, we went back to the hotel and and took a nap.
We eventually decided to try to meet with my cousin the next morning.

We headed out again later and let Jadyn play at Grand Central Mall in nearby Vienna, W. Va.
As the hours passed and with treatment of Jadyn's eye, we began to realize that her condition might not have been as severe as we first thought.
We eventually went to bed for the night, ready to try again the next morning in meeting with my cousin.
Hang on - we hope have some more installments of the Maximum Vacation posted soon!

The Maximum Vacation, Part II

Day 3

We went to the church Amanda attended growing up and I really felt like we were being prepared to enter a difficult period in our trip. We'd really had almost a mountaintop experience in the first two days of the trip and didn't want it to end. (Along the way, we made arrangements to spend more time with our first-stop hosts later in the week.)
The road ahead would be filled with new experiences. Sometimes, facing this leaves one feeling a sense of excitement.
Sometimes, we encounter senses of uncertainty.
This includes being unsure of how an interaction with family will turn out - some I'd never met before, others I hadn't seen in 18 years and we'd seen only a couple of them at our wedding almost 10 years ago. None of them had met Jadyn.
With this sense of heading into a valley of the unknown, we ventured out west from our friends' house along the Pennsylvania Turnpike (a familiar path for Amanda and me), then down Route (U.S. Highway) 220 and a previously uncharted path for all of us.
The first valley in the stretch of ground we encountered from Bedford, Pa. south to the Maryland line was quite picturesque. (Sorry, we didn't take any photos along this particular path.)
We got on Interstate 68 and continued a westward journey, stopping to eat supper outside Cumberland, Md.
Then, we continued on our way.
Our official welcome to West Virginia:

A few minutes later, we pulled in to the welcome center. After we stopped, we realized something was wrong with Jadyn's right eye.

Still, Jadyn struck a pose or two.
And the scenery was just plain gorgeous.

We suspected Jadyn's eye problem might have been pinkeye, but we checked the friend we stayed with and found she and her family had no signs of the dreaded, contagious condition.
We arrived at our hotel in Parkersburg, W. Va. some time around midnight. After several unsuccessful attempts to get our computer connected to the Internet, I went to the front desk for some help in getting the information we needed to diagnose what the problem might be.
After finding out what we could, we suspected pinkeye of some form, but decided we needed to rest for the night.
Please be patient - the next installment of the Maximum Vacation will be on its way soon.

The Maximum Vacation, Part I

Though we'd been thinking about it as long as about a year ago, Amanda and I solidified plans earlier this year to visit Pennsylvania - the state where she grew up - for a summer vacation.
As we developed the itinerary, we decided to stay a total of about four and a half days in Pennsylvania and the remainder visiting relatives of mine in and around Marietta, Ohio.
We packed in absolutely as much as we could possibly stand and were pretty tired afterward but we had a blast!
If you are friends or relatives of ours who live in the areas we visited but we didn't get to see you, we apologize. We tried to see as many people as we could and simply couldn't get to everyone.
Day 1

On June 20, we drove from our home in Mississippi to the Birmingham (Ala.) International Airport. Here, we encouraged Jadyn to flap her wings just before we got on the first of three planes.
Our day of flying included stops in Memphis, Tenn. and Detroit, Mich. before we got to Philadelphia. The Memphis-Detroit connection was tight - we had less than 40 minutes to make it - but we did and got to the City of Brotherly Love in good shape. We obtained our reserved rental car and headed for a friend's house about an hour outside of Philly.

Day 2

We hung out with our friends, did a little shopping and got ready to go to a reunion of people from Amanda's youth group not terribly far from where we were staying. The men in our little cluster of friends took the kids back to play at the house.Then we loaded everybody back up and headed back to Reunion Central, where a fireworks display was scheduled.
The display got underway without warning and at the first shot, Jadyn ran like we were in the middle of a gunfight. We took her inside where she could see the fireworks but only hear them in muffled form, and she declared them cool, or something along those lines.


Please stay tuned for another installment soon from the Maximum Vacation!

Thanksgiving

We had a good time with some folks from church and just kind of hung out at home later. Jadyn's still getting over her cold.
I think about the family members I've spent Thanksgiving with who are now gone, but I know that I have family who now still love us, care for us and are glad we are here. For that, I am grateful.
I'm grateful we've had another day to at least learn how to live a life of gratitude, and, hopefully, faithfulness.

The upcoming birthday ...

Has been on my mind a bit lately. And please, this is not a fish for presents or anything, just thoughts about hitting a near milestone and not really sure how to feel about it.
Parts of my life don't give away the fact that I'm closing in on 39. I don't sense that I'm that old. Having a 1-year-old probably helps.
I do think about my folks sometimes. I don't think my Dad had any parents still alive by this age, though my grandmother might have passed just before he reached it.
The best I think I can do for Jadyn is tell her what I think they'd have said to her, and tell her about their work ethics, concern for family and friends, funny stories, anecdotes and anything else important. Most of all, I know they'd love her and express it in the best ways they could.
I'm glad we have Amanda's folks and all of our extended family, to include those who are family by birth and marriage and the others by unofficial adoption, to love on her and help us raise her.
I think this brief bout of insomnia is over. Back to bed.

Warning - this is pretty random

Been hanging out on another blog/friend site more recently, playing around with the technology, etc.
Still missing our friends.
We think about them at least once a week it seems.
Amanda and I were talking tonight about how strange it is to think about people their ages and realize that we won't be able to talk to them again in this lifetime.
In other stuff:
We're hoping to start unpacking the new house more soon, but seems like we haven't had the energy or time to think about such lately.
Our daughter keeps growing and we absolutely adore her.
Sometimes we feel like we're just Jadyn's parents, but that's how it goes sometimes.
Wow, it's late.
Gotta do some weekend stuff in the morning before the weekend's up.
Later!

I heart my extended family!

Just a real quick to note to express my gratitude for my extended family. As I've probably mentioned before, when I was growing up, those close to my immediate family didn't include those necessarily closest in kin. In fact, some of our closest "family" wasn't even related by blood or marriage.
That's still true today, though some second cousins on both sides of my parents' family and non-related people have truly stepped in where aunts, uncles and even my parents would be.
And Amanda and I have added to the folks who've been there for my family for decades with our own little hodge-podge of people we consider actual family - even though they're simply good friends.
Thank the Lord that he surrounds us with love, and may we be gracious enough to extend it to others.

P.S. - It must be noted that my in-laws love me as if I was their own and have stood beside us in times of difficulty, uncertainty and transition.

Wheezing like a chain smoker

Those who know me have heard me tell the story of how I once tried smoking.
Back in Alabama, spring break in my day was called "AEA week," even at private schools. (I attended private school growing up then graduated from a public high school.) AEA stands for the Alabama Education Association and spring break usually coincided with AEA's annual convention. I think now most schools and districts just pick a week at random in the latter part of March.
Anyway, I think it was the spring of either '82 or '83. I was at home, Mom and Dad were at work. Dad smoked Pall-Malls and I decided I would try it. (I already messed around with chewing tobacco and snuff to "fit in" with a group of kids at the private school.)
I did not see the attraction, but I'm sure it's probably a habit he picked up in the military and never could shake.
I don't remember how many I tried - probably just one. He didn't miss it (them), or if he did, he didn't say anything.
As you are well aware from my wife's blog, she was sick last week. This week, it was my turn, and whatever I have has me wheezing like I'm a lifetime chain smoker.
So far, the baby's been coughing a little today but hopefully she hasn't picked up any of our crud. I didn't like having to stay out an extra day after taking some comp days from work, but I don't think I could function in the shape I was in this morning.
Hopefully the meds our wonderful nurse practitioner gave me will start to work. (Thanks to our friend Amy for hooking us up with the CNP.)
I think I'm going to re-joining the family nap time already in progress after posting something quick on Jadyn's blog.
Post script: I slept in another room to keep from waking everybody up with the coughing. And, I forgot to mention I got my first dose of medicine from a breathing machine. I forgot what they gave me, but it was kind of strange to see the smoky stuff come out of the end of the tube. I'm using an albuterol inhaler too. First time for everything.

"They’ll never see the likes of us again"

Tom Brokaw immortalized the "Greatest Generation" with his book, and the men and women who stuggled so intently to get us through World War II are most certainly deserving of our thanks.
My late parents came of age in the 1940s, with my father doing so as a soldier in the 84th Infantry Division and my mother, eventually, as an employee of the Veterans Administration in Montgomery, Ala.
Dad suffered wounds in the Battle of the Bulge likely somewhere in Belgium Jan. 3, 1945. He returned home and started working at what was then the L(ouisville) and N(ashville) railroad, now a part of CSX Corporation.
A song by Genesis reminds me of Dad. It's called "Driving the Last Spike" and was released on "We Can't Dance" in 1991. It's the story of the development of the railway in England and the human cost, arguably one of the best songs they've done that didn't receive popular acclaim. Of course, there's the connection with the railroad. The hours were sometimes tough on us and him, and he certainly gave his all at his work but to my knowledge it was nothing compared to the loss of life and suffering the men who built the railroads endured.
The line that most reminds me of Dad, Mom and everyone from the "Greatest Generation" is this: "They’ll never see the likes of us again." And, I believe that's true. I hope that my generation can at least raise children comparable to that of the men and women who kept us safe during and after World War II.

Bridging the great divide

Amanda and I tried for nearly four and a half years to have a child before this most recent pregnancy. We encountered one miscarriage in 2001.
During this time, we've known our child(ren) would be born with one set of grandparents missing entirely from the equation of helping to raise and shape our child.
We're now facing the reality we'll have to tell our child(ren) about his or her (thier) paternal grandparents and hope such explanation does the job.
I've written notes about them for an anticipated day we'll be able to sit down and tell him or her about them.
Mom gave birth to me less a month after her 40th birthday. Dad was about six weeks from his 44th birthday when I came into the world. I wasn't quite 16 when Dad died, and I was within weeks of my 31st birthday when Mom passed away.
I've thought for years about making a DVD of people who knew Mom and Dad talking about them. As the years pass, so do the people who can tell our child(ren) about them.
We bought a video camera for the first time this past week, so maybe we can finally do it. Finding the time to get back to my hometown might be a trick, though stranger things have happened.
But we hope we can help our child(ren) have a sense of connectedness to their grandparents, even if it's through a television screen or on a piece of paper.
It's better than nothing.