A belated poem for Father's Day

The Gift

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BY LI-YOUNG LEE

To pull the metal splinter from my palm 

my father recited a story in a low voice. 

I watched his lovely face and not the blade. 

Before the story ended, he’d removed 

the iron sliver I thought I’d die from. 

I can’t remember the tale, 

but hear his voice still, a well 

of dark water, a prayer. 

And I recall his hands, 

two measures of tenderness 

he laid against my face, 

the flames of discipline 

he raised above my head. 

Had you entered that afternoon 

you would have thought you saw a man 

planting something in a boy’s palm, 

a silver tear, a tiny flame. 

Had you followed that boy 

you would have arrived here, 

where I bend over my wife’s right hand. 

Look how I shave her thumbnail down 

so carefully she feels no pain. 

Watch as I lift the splinter out. 

I was seven when my father 

took my hand like this, 

and I did not hold that shard 

between my fingers and think, 

Metal that will bury me,

christen it Little Assassin, 

Ore Going Deep for My Heart. 

And I did not lift up my wound and cry, 

Death visited here!

I did what a child does 

when he’s given something to keep. 

I kissed my father.

Li-Young Lee, “The Gift” from Rose. Copyright ©1986 by Li-Young Lee. Reprinted with the permission of BOA Editions Ltd., www.boaeditions.org.

Source: Rose (BOA Editions Ltd., 1986)

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/43010

Education in love in larger families

Two good pieces of information from the Catholic Catalog blog. First a quote:

Knowledge is not enough for tranquility and goodness, because it doesn’t contain motivation to be good. Only love impels action. We don’t become better because we acquire new information. We become better because we acquire better loves. We don’t become what we know. Education is a process of love formation. When you go to a school, it should offer you new things to love. - David Brooks 

http://thecatholiccatalogue.com/

That quote may not be connected to the following bit of information, but I believe it is, even when families don't actually school at home. Research on how divorce rates are lower among children from larger families:

Growing up with siblings may provide some protection against divorce as an adult, a new nationwide study reveals.
And the more siblings, the better: Each additional sibling a person has (up to about seven) reduces the likelihood of divorce by 2 percent.
The practical difference between having no siblings and having one or two isn't that much in terms of divorce, said Doug Downey, co-author of the study and professor of sociology at The Ohio State University.
"But when you compare children from large families to those with only one child, there is a meaningful gap in the probability of divorce," he said.
One of the biggest surprises of the study was that it wasn't the difference between being an only child and having siblings that was significant.
"We expected that if you had any siblings at all, that would give you the experience with personal relationships that would help you in marriage," said Donna Bobbitt-Zeher, co-author of the study and assistant professor of sociology at Ohio State's Marion campus.
"But we found that the real story appears to be how family dynamics change incrementally with the addition of each sibling. More siblings means more experience dealing with others, and that seems to provide additional help in dealing with a marriage relationship as an adult."

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-08/osu-msm080713.php

Something to read

To counteract the self-serving, anti-life message of the movie/book, Me Before You, here is something better to read:

Following his stroke, when doctors still weren’t sure he’d survive, Clay had a “mystical experience, for lack of a better word.” It wasn’t religious or near-death, but something more concrete. “I knew something had happened, but I didn’t know what. I thought for the longest time, did I imagine that? But ever since it happened, it’s guided my whole life.” In writing Will & I, Clay understood that this experience in the hospital was the framework upon which the memoir had to rest. “The experience felt both like I’d willed it and like it had come out of nowhere,” he writes. “I became my will—there was nothing holding me back anymore—but my will was more than me.” Paralyzed from the eyes down, Clay was free.

http://www.sewanee.edu/features/story/claybyars.html

20 Years!

Last week we celebrated 20 years of wedded bliss and all the reality that goes with it.  Our marriage is out of its teens, but it still feels young! We used to do marriage prep classes when we lived in the Chicago archdiocese 15 years ago, and on the evaluations, we received positive comments because we were young. I thought I knew a lot about marriage back then. Now we're middle aged, and I feel kind of the same way about marriage that I do about parenting. I don't have the answers anymore, but all the work is worth it!  

Some fun exchanges about marriage in the New York Times recently: Alain de Botton's essay urging a more realistic view of marriage over false romanticism, and the letters in response.  De Botton explains the irony of his title in the last paragraphs:

"The person who is best suited to us is not the person who shares our every taste (he or she doesn’t exist), but the person who can negotiate differences in taste intelligently — the person who is good at disagreement. Rather than some notional idea of perfect complementarity, it is the capacity to tolerate differences with generosity that is the true marker of the “not overly wrong” person. Compatibility is an achievement of love; it must not be its precondition.

Romanticism has been unhelpful to us; it is a harsh philosophy. It has made a lot of what we go through in marriage seem exceptional and appalling. We end up lonely and convinced that our union, with its imperfections, is not “normal.” We should learn to accommodate ourselves to “wrongness,” striving always to adopt a more forgiving, humorous and kindly perspective on its multiple examples in ourselves and in our partners."

I love the comments of the last letter writer (a man who was married 47 years): "But binding your life together, creating a family and warmly remembering it all as one’s days become numbered is my definition of marrying the right person."

Cheers to 20 more years! Were we old enough to drink? 

To celebrate our anniversary, we went out for sushi. But we didn't stay out late because we had to go home to finish washing sheets and searching for nits in the kids' hair.  One of our dear children greeted me with a "Look what I found!" when I came in from doing something outside. One his finger was a nice, fat, louse. Thank the Lord, I did not find anything on the 8 other heads in our family (although I'm suspicious that my husband didn't check me thoroughly). But we still all washed with lice shampoo and used the comb-out gel. And I stripped all the beds, bagged on the stuffed animals, put all the pillows in the dryer on high heat, and had a great time combing each others' heads.  Lice is apparently almost at epidemic proportions out here in Southern California. People aren't the only things that love living here.

Here we are having fun on our anniversary! Just finished 9 lice treatments!
Thought we needed a photo to remember the day. 

Still loving life!

Lots to celebrate over the past few weeks: Memorial Day events, awards ceremonies, end of the school year parties. We have an eighth grade promotion and a high school graduation at the end of the week.  The calendar has been packed.

Awards ceremonies

Remembering the fallen 

Concert in the park 

More awards ceremonies -- an a haircut!

At another awards ceremony

Heading back to school after an end of the year picnic at the park.

Soccer is over, yay!

Exploring the botanic gardens with cousins.

The 18 yr old got a record player. Garage sale finds.