Family Dialects

Moving from 1900 square feet in Harpursville, NY to 1000 square feet in Pagosa Springs, CO means opening a lot of boxes and doing triage on what to keep. Part of this process is, for me, unsealing boxes of records and memorabilia from my dad's estate (he died in 2005) and finally rifling through it.

My dad kept many letters from family members--including a host that were from his parents' storage. So I find myself reading letters from my great aunt Louisa to her brother, my grandfather. Grandpa Tyler's name was George (Horsley), but when writing, Louisa never addressed him as such. Her name for him was "Keats." It took me some time to figure out who the players were, because Aunt Louisa always signed her letters to him "Weed."

I think "Keats" stuck to Grandpa because he fancied himself a poet, or at least enough to have impressed his little sister. "Weed" stuck to Louisa not for the reasons one humorously suspects in 2016 Colorado, but probably because she was a younger sister but growing fast.

Weed signed her correspondence to Keats "Siempre, Weed"--reflecting another facet of the Tyler side of the family: a love of many languages. It is not uncommon in correspondence between my dad, his siblings, their parents, and their extended family, to find postcards written entirely in French or German. And it is very common to see phrases or sentences appear in any one of a number of foreign languages, certainly marking some inside family or personal experience.

I won't be saving most of these letters, but I hope to be able to savor them as I bring them out of the earth of storage. The process will be long--the Tyler family was known for its archiving ability. But c'est la vie!

~ emrys

Great Grandparents

There is a joy in their greeting borne of long absence. There are always gifts in their hands--not necessarily big or flashy, and often pre-approved by the parents, but carefully and lovingly chosen. They have the knowing calm of experience to face what exasperates the middle generation. And sometimes they laugh at what infuriates us parents--because they know that in the long run, we'll laugh, too.

They are grandparents. And done well, grandparenting is one of the greatest gifts to the world.

I have heard the grandparenting philosophy known as "spoil 'em and give 'em back," and have come to despise it.

Our children do not have those kind of grandparents. They have grandparents who relish every story heard and told by the wee ones. They have grandparents whose loving patience exceeds that of their parents, but will put up with no more unacceptable behavior. They have grandparents with gentle voices and enveloping embraces.

These grandparents see in their grandchildren all the come-uppance that we parents earned in our childhoods, but keep their reminders kind, with a twinkle of the eye.

These grandparents are great, and we are blessed to have them in the lives of our children.

Thank God for great grandparents!

Adventures in Rest

They discovered that the old apple tree growing on the other side of the creek had a host of fruit. Small, but with that Granny-Smith kind of bite.

"These are good! Let's get a basket so we can have them for snacks!" says the elder, bubbling over with excitement.

"Yah!" says the younger, "Les get baskit!"

We pick a couple of dozen. Correction: I pick a couple of dozen, while the other two argue over the basket, eat the proceeds, and get distracted, all in thirty-second cycles.

She lets out a gasp. "Daddy! Look! There's another one up there!"

It's true. Our property used to host a whole orchard of apple trees. It still does, technically. But they've gone untended so long, no orchard would want them.

"Where?" says the younger.

"See, up there? With the red apples on it. Daddy, let's go up there!"

"You do realize that means we have to cut a path through the weeds." Moment of diabolical parental anticipation: I had been procrastinating on hacking my way to that very tree earlier this week.

"Let's go get the tools!" says the elder.

"Me too!" says the younger.

An hour later, we're half way there:

Burdock, it turns out, is a fascinating opponent in a first-grader's summer imagination. We have to hack through a great deal of it. One would think we were slaying dragons.

Another hour later, and we've been to the Red Apple Tree. (And we have found the other two Green Apple Trees right next to it.) These are sweeter, more of a Fuji or Gala. Perfect for "ruining one's dinner," as we often say:

When one has a belly full of wild apples, there is no better activity than digging in Daddy's Bridge Renovation Site. After a lesson in not sitting where someone else's shovel is flinging (bloody nose), seats are found side-by-side. And there is silence in the yard for a whole fifteen minutes:

"No work today," my calendar said. Sabbath.

The sweat in my clothes begs to differ. It can beg away, though--because labor this fun can't count as work.

~ emrys

Why Parents Should Volunteer At School

Last month I signed up to serve as a parent chaperone on my daughter's class trip to the nearby Discovery Center. I figured I might be the only dad to sign up; it turns out I was the only parent from her class. This means that I was put in charge of four kindergarteners. "In charge" means "try to keep up and make sure none falls from too great a height." 

The class had a "lecture" (I use the term in its elementary sense) on bubbles. Part of the experiential learning that followed included bubble ink. "Have you ever blown bubbles with a straw in your chocolate milk?" was the intro. The idea was to froth up a bowl full of colored water, then press paper on top and make a print. But really, when kindergarteners get license to do what their parents have been telling them for three years not to do at Denny's, they just want to . . . blow bubbles. Lots of them. Until the bowl overflows in a Kilauea of multicolored surface tension. Until this parent, who unwittingly volunteered to "oversee" this activity, found himself spending most of the time sopping rainbow rivulets of water off the table.

The payoff for all that sopping was watching as my wee merry band discovered the Pirate Ship and treasure chest filled with Pirate dress-up costumes. When they had decked themselves out and set their hands to the rigging, I made a serendipitous discovery: A bunch of kindergarteners will focus and stand still for a moment if I ask them to yell, "Aaargh, me hearties!" Instant attention and coordination!

I try not to take many pictures of my children. But when, without prompting, they strike poses on a pirate ship, I cannot resist.

Color, sound, energy: joy!

~ emrys

Living Color

Yesterday, April 26th, more than 5,000 people gathered at our local community college-cum-SUNY satellite campus for a fun run called "Color Run." The 5K "race" includes getting sprayed down at half-mile intervals with brightly colored corn starch. By the end of the 3.1 miles, participants have been doused in orange, pink, yellow, green, and blue dye. (The dye works its way out of skin in about a week, and out of blonde hair in a month or so--I'm told.) I call it a "race" because the throngs are so thick that runners can't manage more than a jog, and walkers are really just sauntering. A better way to describe it is a fast parade of people who have finally found an excuse to wear their loudest, most brightly colored ensembles and get messy. Here's a shot back at the first mile:

Sara, Gwendolyn, and Kerri did the Color Run together. Gwendolyn had trained for this over the last few weeks; finishing a three-mile walk on her own feet was an accomplishment. Here is the triumphant trio coming out of the last splash of color (but before the penultimate glitter station):

~ emrys

Church Rules

Two Sundays ago, the following exchange happened, on paper, in the church pew during worship. The players: Kerri is a beloved friend of the family, college student, and wise mentor to my precocious 6-year-old daughter.

It's amazing what can be said in the silence of pen and paper.

"Dear G: Today is Sunday, April 12th, 2015, and your bony bottom is squishing me. However, even though your dress is itchy beyond belief I still love you very much. Love, Kerri"

"Dear G: I love you. Sit on your own buns. Remember church rules. Love, Mom."

I love the women in my life.

~ emrys

Both Ends of the Spectrum

The stark contrasts within my children sometimes amaze me. It's as if, at the age of 5 1/2, there is a policy of full inclusion, unconscious of paradoxes that we will see later in life.

Here is my daughter, gleefully sloshing in the autumn creek water, one of her favorite activities outside:

And here is that same young lady, poised and ready for the beginning of Sunday morning worship:

I'm not sure who taught her to cross her legs like that--I suspect that, yet again, she's imitating Kerri. Of course, one thing is constant: PinkAndPurple.

What a grand mixture we are, from the very beginning!

~ emrys

Tyler Family Jewels

I didn't know it until about two years ago, while unpacking more of the articles left to me by my dad's death, but he had his own silver ware as a child:

 Note the "T" on the handle of the utensils (which are, by the way, baby-sized):

 Dad was not technically a "Second," since his father's name was George Horsley Tyler and Dad's was just George Tyler. But the shorthand in the Tyler family was always George I, George II, and George III (for my half-brother, George Moreland):

 The silver cup had an assortment of exotic animals etched in it:

Neither of my kids ever wanted to eat out of it . . . I'm not sure what's going to happen to it. Maybe I'll have it melted down for something.

~ emrys

Dirty Work, Dirty Play

We're rearranging our garden for next year, which means dismantling seven of the raised beds and planting grass seed. Yesterday morning, Gwendolyn asked if we could work in the garden after breakfast. Micah piped up with his approval of the idea. So out we went. They love wheelbarrow work, because it means both moving dirt and riding to and fro in the empty barrow.

We've razed two beds and seeded them for next year:

We found a toad, petted it, held it, and followed it around in the grass for a while:

The dirt from the garden beds is going to fill in the earthen ramp on the north side of the back porch:

Micah spent a good half hour playing by himself inside the barrow:

His big sister spent that time discovering textures in the moist earth:

Both really like shovel work: cutting, lifting, and dumping:

Here is Minute 14 of the first 30-minute period this week when they occupied with same space without making each other angry:

What a blessing to work and play in the dirt with my children!

~ emrys

Remember When . . .

. . . you could fit inside a vacuum cleaner? Remember when you wanted to?

Digging out my mobile phone pictures, I found these two of Micah, at 1.5 years, loving the steam cleaner. It's in repose, getting its resevoir refilled. While an adult makes the trip from living room to kitchen faucet, Micah seizes the moment to climb into his race car and take off.

And for the times when the race car is not going fast enough, the geniuses at Hoover even added a crop with which to whip your vehicle to greater speeds:

Yee-ha!

~ emrys

For The Record

After three years of compiling, editing, supplementary writing, more editing, formatting, more editing, and uploading, it's finally complete: the compilation of our blog posts (plus hosts of extra photos) from 2006-2008.

If you're one of the few family or friends who could imagine dropping $60 for a copy, it's found at: http://www.lulu.com/shop/sara-emrys-tyler/our-great-adventure-2006-2008/hardcover/product-21715499.html

I'm going to take a breather before I get working on another one of these.

~ emrys

Traditional

How many times does a family have to repeat an activity before it can be called a "ritual"? How many years must contain the same activity, in the same season, before it can be called a "tradition"?

For our household, blueberry picking has become a tradition.When Stone Hill Blueberry Farm opens up in July, we schedule a day to pluck several buckets of the little blue lovelies. Picking our own fruit continues to be one of the few activities which, for all four of us, can be productive, healthy, energetic, and fun all at the same time.

For scale, here's the haul, drying on the kitchen counter, with my two-year-old son looking on with excitement:

Jam and jelly, here we come!

~ emrys

Dad's Long Drive

When my brother and I were young, in the early 1980s, we took a few family vacations to Chincoteague, Virginia. There we would inhabit a little cottage for a few days, go crabbing off the community pier, and find all the trouble for which two young boys search.

As a surgeon, Dad was often on call, which meant that at any time of day or night he could be called in to the Emergency Room or the Operating Room for a case. But even physicians get to take real, honest-to-goodness vacations, by getting one of their colleagues to cover on-call duty while they're gone. During our trips to Chincoteague Dad was covered by his fellow physicians.

On one occasion, however, even having coverage did not allow Dad to escape the duties of medicine. While we were in Virginia, one of his patients fell into a state in which emergency surgery was necessary. This patient refused the procedure if Dad wasn't the one doing the operation. So the hospital got hold of Dad, three states away, and he made the drive back to Bethlehem. As he told the story later, Dad drove 80 mph the whole way home, hoping and praying for a police car to pull him over so that he could get an escort. (Dad never intentionally drove over the speed limit, which at the time was 55 mph.) Of course, on that trip home, not an officer was to be found on the highway between Chincoteague and Bethlehem.

Those were the days when Dad was driving the brown Datsun station wagon (remember station wagons?), the boxy precursor to the boxy Nissan models. I remember kids at school calling them "rice-grinders," as a derogatory epithet. But that year the little Datsun made it back and forth to Chincoteague twice without a hitch (or an escort), and lasted several years more, to boot.

~ emrys

Festivals of Booths

A.J. Jacobs, in his (hilarious and insightful) book The Year of Living Biblically, describes trying to obey the scriptural injunction to spend a week of each year living in a booth made with one's own hands. He lives in a Manhattan apartment, so a bit of marital drama unfolds when he fills up the living room with two-by-fours, nails, and canvas for his booth.

Our household does not take that injunction literally, but I think we begin to approximate the spirit of it when we celebrate the pilgrim character of our lives by constructing a chair-and-blanket fort in the living room:

I say "we," but should be clear that Gwendolyn and I did this project, fueled with the excitement of sleeping inside it that night. (Mommy stuck to the comfort of the bed upstairs.)

L'Chaim!
~ emrys

Baching It with My Toddler

Mommy dropped off Gwendolyn at school on Wednesday, then drove on away to her work in Norwich for the day. Micah and I were left in our bachelors' paradise to whoop it up and explore the house from the point of view of a sixteen-month-old. First was about forty-five minutes spent opening, climbing into, playing in, and closing the shower:

 Micah could get the door closed and opened from the inside by himself. Once it was closed and he was outside, though, he needed me to reach the handle to open it again. So the sixth step in every iteration (the first five being enter, close, open, exit, close) was to go get me from the kitchen and ask for help please--in clear sign language. Once I opened the door for him, he didn't care what I did for the other five steps of his routine.

 The other arena of strength training, flexibility, and stamina yesterday was the booster seat. Micah wants no more to be buckled in. If he's going to sit at the table, he wants to get into the seat himself and sit unbound by seat belts that no adult uses.

 And he wants to feed himself once he's up.

And he wants to prove that he's also unbound by rules of etiquette and toddler safety.

That move was just for the record. After I got the photo, he sat down again and resumed eating.

I had forgotten how much fun it is to explore the world of adult furniture with a toddler. And I have remembered what it's like to cross an important line into an age of slightly lower maintenance: While Micah played in the shower and on the chairs, I got a load of laundry done and dishes in and out of the dishwasher.

~ emrys

My Inheritance

It's official: we have done our legal duty as parents and established our Last Wills and Testaments. If the imponderable happens, there will at least be a legal framework for our children's care and the passing on of our property and finances.

I found it impossible not to wax at least a bit philosophical when considering the choices involved in making a will. Something about weighing the situation after my physical demise--which, make no mistake, will come eventually--makes me consider the value of this life which will then be ended. I think about inheritance, that which I pass along, and wonder about what will remain after me besides my physical stuff. It strikes me as summarily unsatisfactory to have the entirety of my legacy enumerable on balance sheets and tax maps.

We Christians throw around the word testament quite a bit. We have two of them specifically designed for Sunday mornings: the Old Testament and New Testament. In this context we read into those words the meaning "book," but the original intent is closer to what we just signed with a lawyer: that which is legally and enforcibly passed on to the next generation. In Christ we receive the inheritance of God's Spirit, who imbues us with courage and grace in this life and into eternity. Christ is the seal on God's will for us, broken, opened, and disbursed for our blessing. In Christ God passes on the blessings of divinity to us.

What shall I pass on to my children, and to others with whom I might share this journey long enough to leave a good impression? Though I desire that my children, until they can make their own way in this world, are provided for in material ways, I want more passionately to pass on faith, character, and the things that make for peace. I want my children to be wise--I pray for it every day--but I am not sure that wisdom travels one generation to the next by structured means. Perhaps it seeps in more by lived example, like the grace notes in a song only heard after hundreds of listenings. I want to pass on love, but not the kind that satisfies instantaneously or the kind that gives words more weight than action. I want to pass on love that waits and endures, love that produces a wondrous synergy between the melody of speech and the harmony of behavior. I want to pass on a love that is not deceived into believing that what comes first is best, but recognizes that sometimes the last is the richest.

I pray that my children will receive abundance of life as I have known it--and more! In Christ, with the community in which they live, and in themselves. I pray that this inheritance will last long after the final penny of my life insurance is spent. I hope that the expansive principle of the kingdom will make it possible for my inheritance to bless many generations in ways I could not ask or imagine. I shall pray for this, then live tomorrow for eternity.

~ emrys

The Green Pan

In about 1995, during my university years, I bought a huge Texas frying pan. (I don't remember whether it was called a "Texas" frying pan in Montreal, but that's what they call it in Yankee country.) It was made out of thin steel with a coating of teflon. Great for cooking up big batches of stir fry to feed hordes of college students. My most enduring memory of using the pan was to make stir fry for a floor event in our residence hall. I discovered at the grocery store that in Montreal they sell horse meat and that it's considerably cheaper than beef. So I made stir fry with horse meat. Everyone loved the dish--and had frequent seconds--until they discovered in conversation what kind of protein was in it. Then a few backed off.

After fourteen years, three or four moves, and too much use of metal spatulas, the pan was pretty beat up. The teflon came off the bottom in occasional flakes, which I've heard is not healthy. At the end of last year, it was time for Old Texas Faithful to go.

 In Walmart and other purveyors of fine goods, I had passed a new invention: ceramic-coated frying pans. I was intrigued, but had not yet made the decision to buy. My brother Chris, who has become a Foodie of Wisdom and Simplicity, heard about my investigations and bought us a Green Pan for Christmas.

 We have used it for six months now, and it is serving us very well. The ceramic coating works as well as teflon for a non-stick surface, and we're no longer consuming tiny black chips of mysterious bonded chemicals as additional spices. Thanks, Chris!

~ emrys

Carrying My Lovely

The morning before I left for my last business trip to Louisville, My Lovely Daughter took me out to the front lawn to pick dandelions. She handed me the bouquet of yellow and told me they were for me to take on my trip. So I wrapped the steps in a wet rag, stuck them in a ziploc bag, and hoped that security wouldn't confiscate them. I took pictures and sent them at each stage, so My Lovely would know she had gone with me. Here they are in the Syracuse airport, waiting to go through security:

 Here they are in DC, waiting for a connecting flight:

 Here they are in Louisville, Kentucky, arrived safely (though a little wilted from a day's travel, like me) in the hotel:

Here are the tired blossoms the next day, on the edge of the Ohio River:

And I thought a fitting send-off would be dispersal into the great Ohio River--who knows how far they've traveled toward the Mississippi delta since I let them go?

~ emrys

Memorial

I took Gwendolyn today to the graveyard which is under the care of our congregation. We walked among the tomb stones and took note of all the flags--US, firefighters, and one New York State flag for a member of the State Police. I remembered with her the few that I have buried in my six and a half years here pointing to names on glossy head stones. I remembered for her that her Grandpa George is buried in a cemetery in Pennsylvania, and that she won't get to see him in person until we get to glory. In her sensitive four-year-old way, she told me that she "missed him very much," even though she never met him. We remembered in prayer all those who have lost to war, and the Prince of Peace who we hope will arrive soon to put an end to our self-inflicted suffering.

In spite of my own ambiguity toward nationalism and national pride, I want my daughter to remember, among so many other things, those who have departed this world in theaters more strange and dangerous than most Americans will encounter. So today we remembered.

In Memoriam:

George Tyler, MD

1939-2005

Vietnam 1970-1971

Army, 1st Cavalry Division

and

all The Boys he could not save

who lost their lives

out in the boonies

far from home

~ emrys

Spontaneous Creativity

Gather a bunch of high school students together in your home, and fascinating things will happen.

Invite anyone over the age of ten to play with wooden blocks, and they will take offense. Blocks are for little kids, their faces will tell you.

Invite kids over the age of ten to hang out in the vicinity of an open container of blocks, and they will inevitably begin to build things. As long as they have not been asked to do so.

Last month we had some high schoolers over for brunch during their spring break. Here's one of the many constructions that grew out of our living room floor:

Note the four-year-old spectator on the left, dressed in pink fleece. She wasted no time including herself in the engineering work.

Let's hear it for creativity and the most basic of toys.

~ emrys