I'm so happy to be here!

The Ties That Bind: Stories of Love, Family, & the Legacy We Leave

darin

Two Hearts (Are Better Than One)

It’s still a matter of family debate, just how, but Shari’s mom found out about our trip.

Before, her boundaries and lines in the sand were just a game for me to win. Now, I saw them as direct challenges to my future with Shari. Before, she’d just wanted to keep me at a distance. Now, I had no other way to feel—both Shari’s mother and grandmother wanted me gone. 

It all stung. But I told myself it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to worry about winning these little battles of will anymore; I’d set my sights on winning the war. The one blind spot in their plans—they hadn’t noticed that Shari had too.

I really wish Dad had been there to tell me what to do. He always knew. Dad always had a plan. His plans always worked. What plan could there be? I asked Mom what Dad would say. He’d have told me to channel the hurt into purpose. Mom added that God would bring good out of this somehow. 

The dogs on Main Street howl
‘Cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister I ain’t a boy, no, I’m a man
And I believe in a promised land.

Things changed. And (God help Shari’s mom), I got smarter. It was in this part of our story that I did my best George imitation. 

Our relationship was cemented after all we’d been through together. Neither of us ever had a thought of giving up. We had resolve, if anything, to prove our love. I started planning to propose. 

Baby, tie your hair back in a long white bow,
Meet me in the fields out behind the dynamo;
You hear their voices telling you not to go,
They’ve made their choices and they’ll never know;
What it means to steal, to cheat, to lie,
What it’s like to live and die; Prove it all night.

The older I get, the more I see my father’s resemblance in the mirror each morning. And the more of his tendencies I recognize in my personality and demeanor—some desirable, others not so much. A pain in the ass. But charming. It’s in my DNA.

I also remember more of what I observed of him, things that I saw in him every day growing up but, at the time, didn’t realize the impression they were making on me. I am my father’s son.

Neither of my parents had ideal home settings growing up. Dad’s parents were much older; in their fifties when he was born. He lost his father when he was just a boy. At the point my parents met, Dad was living alone with his mother. Though he had two older, grown siblings, he was the only one of her children helping to financially support her. 

Mom never knew her biological father. Two photos of the man exist—one with her as a little girl, sitting on the hood of an old car, her dad standing proudly behind her. The other is a photo of his ass that my grandmother snapped as he leaned down into the car. Granny used to say of that picture, “It captures his best side.”

Mom’s only memory of her dad was when she was in first grade, he showed up at her school as students were being dismissed. He had a shiny, new bicycle for her. Mom was thrilled, but she had to walk it home, she hadn’t learned to ride a bike yet. All the way home she day-dreamed, maybe her dad could come teach her to ride. Granny was furious when Mom got home; told her, “Leave that damn thing outside!” When Mom got up for school the next morning, the bicycle was gone. “Oh well,” Granny said. “It must have been stolen.”

A few years later, Granny remarried. Her new husband was a wonderful man and very caring towards Mom. Granny told Mom he’d adopted her so she started using his last name, Soukup. (It wasn’t until years later that Mom learned she’d never been officially adopted.) Her step-dad was a talented pianist and composer who, just as he was on the verge of success, was stricken with crippling arthritis in his hands. His hands became swollen and disfigured, and his musical aspirations died. He launched a string of entrepreneurial ventures he hoped would provide for the family, each failing in turn, leaving them scrambling as he sunk into depression. Mom was forced to change schools several times as her parents lost leases and wore out welcomes. If normal teenage girl insecurities weren’t enough, having to start over with new schools and struggling to make new friends, along with the added pressures of helping keep her family afloat financially took a toll emotionally. 

I think somewhere in the genesis of their relationship, Mom and Dad embraced an ‘us against the world’ identity. They were each other’s way forward. 

We were our way forward. 

My siblings all gathered recently. We talked about how fortunate we are for the childhood Mom and Dad gave us, especially as we know neither of them had ideal upbringings. 

Our sister Diann told us all a few things we didn’t know (Diann lived a mile away from Mom the last 25 years of her life, saw her just about daily and became de facto sorter and distributer of all family lore—photo albums, home movies, stories, written down and verbally shared—when Mom died). 

We’re all familiar with the stories of Mom’s birthfather, Granny’s jesting about him, and the bicycle. And we know Grandpa Soukup was a loving stepfather to Mom. Something we hadn’t heard, Diann shared with us this last visit.

Back in 2009, Diann traveled to Chicago with Mom (Mom’s 60th high school reunion). On that trip, they visited the home where Mom was born and saw several of the sites where she’d grown up. Mom shared a lot of memories during the trip. She’d opened up about a source of great heartache from her childhood. 

To Mom, fully embracing her stepfather felt like betraying her birthfather. She felt like if he was still out there somewhere, if he still loved her, then she didn’t want to appoint another man to that place in her heart. And she felt pressure from Granny to do just that. 

As Shari’s parents divorced and remarried—and especially as her father disowned her—Shari knew this pain all too well. It became an abiding, hurt in her heart. All I could do was lovingly be present … and point forward to, hopefully, better days. 

I went out walking the other day
Seen a little girl crying along the way;
She'd been hurt so bad said she'd never love again
Someday your crying, girl, will end;
And you'll find once again
Two hearts are better than one
Two hearts, girl, get the job done
Two hearts are better than one.

To be continued …

Jump up, Bub!

What Has Become of Reading?

darin

Forgive an old curmudgeon for asking, but… 

What has happened to us?

Not to them. To us.

When did reading become something we only do if someone can summarize it in thirty seconds? When did every article need a “Too Long; Didn’t Read” version? When did we decide that scrolling was somehow the intellectual equivalent of reading?

Our primary education began with Fun with Dick and Jane. Our secondary education had us wrestling our way through To Kill a Mockingbird, The Scarlet Letter, and enough Shakespeare to convince us that English wasn’t actually English.

We didn’t enjoy all of it.

But we read it.

Today, children are handed tablets before they can tie their shoes. By kindergarten they’re swiping screens better than they can print their names. By middle school they’re fluent in emojis, GIFs, and acronyms. By graduation they can communicate almost any emotion with a yellow face wearing sunglasses—but ask them to read twelve uninterrupted pages without checking a notification and you’ve proposed an Olympic event.

Long-form journalism has become clickbait. Essays have become listicles. Books become podcasts. Podcasts become sixty-second clips.

Even our conversations have been reduced to abbreviations.

LOL.

OMG.

IDK.

SMH.

We’re communicating more than ever while saying less than ever.

We once learned to diagram sentences. Now we’re lucky if we can finish one.

We used to argue about what the author meant. Now we argue about whether the article was too long.

Somewhere along the way we confused having information at our fingertips with having wisdom in our heads. I don’t think we’ve become less intelligent. I think we’ve become less patient with intelligence.

Now permit one more curmudgeonly observation.

My grandkids read. And this Bubba couldn’t be happier. 

Yes, they have tablets. (Insert appropriately exaggerated eye roll here.) They know how to navigate technology better than I know how to reset the television after I accidentally change the input.

But they also curl up with books. Good books. They disappear into stories. They ask questions. They laugh at characters. They imagine worlds.

And that doesn’t happen by accident.

Their parents—my kids, and yes, this is absolutely a Proud Dad Moment—have made reading part of who they are as a family.

Because here’s what I’ve come to believe: Children don’t become readers because we tell them reading is important. They become readers because they grow up in homes where books are loved.

Maybe the future isn’t determined by artificial intelligence after all. Maybe it’s determined by whether a six-year-old still believes there’s magic hidden between the covers of a book.

I don’t worry nearly as much about whether my grandkids know how to use an iPad. I worry about whether they’ll still know how to lose themselves in a good book.

Judging by the love of books I see in them as children… I think they’re going to be just fine.