I turned 50 a while back. Or maybe I’m going to be 50 soon. I forget which. I like to be coy. Nonetheless, I jotted down a random list of 50 things I’ve learned or observed in 50 years. These things may not be universally true, but they are true for me.

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1. If you want to be really really good at something, you will probably have to forsake something else in your life. The pursuit of excellence in any given field is not conducive to moderation or balance.  Either balance is overrated or excellence is — I’m not sure which, but you can’t really have both.

2. Being average is not a bad thing – there’s a lot of good company in the middle of the pack.

3. In most matters, done is better than perfect. But done right is better than done fast, except for housework.  Then good enough is good enough.

4. Never say “It can’t get worse.” It can get worse. It can definitely get worse.

5. It’s better to be content than rich. Riches are easier to come by than contentment.

6. You can disagree with someone and still like them.

7. You can dislike someone and still be kind to them.

8. Education is as much about enlightenment as employment. Education is never a waste.

9. You’ll never know how much your parents love you until you have your own child.

10. You’ll never know how much you hurt your parents until you have your own child.

11. No one will remember what shoes or earrings you wore to the party.

12. Getting drunk is extremely uncool.  Always has been.

13. Honor your father and mother so that it might go well with you.

14. There are three things you can do to make your life very very difficult – making babies too young and without commitment, using drugs, and getting involved in credit card debt. I only know of one first hand; the other two I managed to avoid by the grace of God.

15. Teachers and nurses are two of the few vocations where you can really make a difference in the life of another human being. The rest of us are just pushing paper.

16. Maintaining flexibility is the key to aging well. Stretch your mind and body a little each day.

17. Life is a series of peaks and valleys. Like the weather, it’s always about to change.

18. Nothing in the mall will make you happy. For very long.

19. We can’t all be leaders.

20. If you can’t be a good leader, be a good follower.

21. Make sure the person you are following is taking you where you want to go.

22. Nothing good comes of a secret.

23. On the other hand, every thought does not need to be expressed.

24. Anger poisons the soul. A grudge prisons the soul. Forgiveness purifies the soul. Forgive with haste.

25. When you win an argument, you really lose.

26. Concede whenever you can.

27. Career is a fancy name for a job.

28. No matter how bad you think you look right now, 10 years from now you will wish you looked as good.

29. The only thing that makes me smarter than when I was 20 is that now I have an awareness of how little I really know.

30. Whatever stylish thing you are wearing right now will look ridiculous in 10 years.

31. Encourage more, criticize less.

32. Use the guest towels.

33. Television is anesthesia. Watch as little as possible.

34. Life is short. But it could also be long – start saving when you are young.

35. Quality Time is a big fat modern lie when it comes to your kid. Go for Quantity Time.

36. Life is too short to spend time trying to get curly hair be straight or straight hair to be curly. Find a hairstyle that suits your hair.

37. The only way to lose weight is to eat less and move more.

38. Fashion magazines are designed to make you feel badly about yourself. Save your money.

39. Speak less, listen more.

40. Every day, no matter how cruddy, is a great day to be alive.

41. Smoking is ugly, smelly, stupid and looks silly. Don’t smoke.

42. Anyone who says they have no regrets is lying. We’ve all done and said regrettable things.

43. If you haven’t done anything regrettable, you haven’t lived. Or at least not long enough.

44. The perfect purse is worth every penny.

45. Grocery store make up is just as good as department store make up, but if paying 3x as much makes you feel better, that probably makes it worth it.

46. Say please and thank you to everyone, but especially to those who do the cruddy stuff no one else wants to do. Your kids are watching.

47. Be quick to tell your kid you are sorry when (not if) you mess up. That in and of itself is a teaching moment.

48. Don’t underestimate the power of silence to make a point.

49. Let your children (and those you love) know every day that you delight in them, that they are a source of joy in your life; that you are glad they were born.

50. The person who most needs your kindness is likely the last person to whom you want to be kind.

Sunday night, the church we attend held its annual Christmas get-together where the children sing Christmas songs and have their picture taken with Santa and Mrs. Claus.  So we donned our gay apparel and off we went.

Sean had been looking forward to going because he knew that Santa would be there and he wanted to make sure Santa knows that he wants a bow and arrow for Christmas.  He doesn’t really believe in Santa, but Sean is the kind of guy who likes to cover his bases.

At the same time, he was not looking forward to going because he knew that he, along with his Sunday school class, was expected to get up and sing in front of everybody and he would rather eat broccoli with spinach sauce than do that.

When they called Sean’s class up to the front to perform, he did not want to go.  Like a mule, he sat back on his heels and refused to go.

Had it been just me, I would have said fine, no biggie and let it go at that. It didn’t seem very important to me and I know I hate being forced into doing something that makes me uncomfortable.  And if there is one thing that makes me uncomfortable it’s the thought of being forced to sing in front of a roomful of people.  And just below that is the thought that I should have to wrestle my child to the ground and then drag him by his ankles up front to sing for a room full of people.   Then there would be two terrified, not to mention angry, people up front which would put a damper on the whole tidings of comfort and joy theme. So then, my vote was to not make it an issue.

But Antique Daddy saw it differently.  He felt it was important that Sean push through the fear and get up and sing with his group.  So he coaxed and cajoled and encouraged.  Sean looked to me for a rescue, but also high on the list of things that make me squirm is the thought of having a spousal argument in front of the entire church body, so I shrugged my shoulders to indicate to Sean that I was staying out of it and that this was between him and his daddy.

Finally AD grabbed him by the hand and drug him up front offered to go with him.  So off they went to the front hand and hand.  Sean made his way to the stage while AD stood off to one side.

As he stood among his peers, lip-syncing Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer, I thought about how parenting is this constant challenge of trying to decide when to push and when to back off.  And how often no matter which way you go it feels like you’re getting it wrong.

When he got back to his seat, I pulled him into my lap and told him I thought he did a great job and that I was really proud of how brave he was.

“I wasn’t brave!” he said in a huff, “I was really really scared!”  And then he nestled into me like a bird in a nest.

“I know,” I whispered in his ear, “Being brave means being really really scared and doing it anyway.”

The turkey is not even on the table yet and most of us are already thinking about Christmas.  For the past week or more, the retailers have been relentless in reminding us about Black Friday, the high holy day of materialism.  Getting up at dark thirty and going to a crazy crowded store and fighting over the “it” toy of the season is just not my thing. If it is yours, please have at it. Have my share. Enjoy.

Yesterday Sean and I were at the grocery store and we ran into a friend of ours.  As we chatted, she mentioned that she had all of her Christmas shopping done for her children except for the big things.  Without thinking, I said “I don’t think there will be any big things under our tree this year.”

That was a really dumb thing to say.

I didn’t really mean to say it out loud.  I probably made her feel badly for saying it, which was not my intention.  Her statement was completely innocuous and nearly everyone I know utters that sentence sooner or later during the holidays.

But the fact of the matter is, there will not be big things under our Christmas tree this year — partly out of necessity and partly out of design.

And in an odd sort of way the necessity facilitates the design.  In an odd sort of way the tremendous love we have for our boy inspires in us a desire to give him more than is good for him. In an odd sort of way having less than he wants will make him more.  In an odd sort of way,  in the dearth of excess there is abundance and in excess there is emptiness. And all of these things conflict, confuse and claw at the heart.

Earlier in the year, we read the entire Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series with Sean.  We loved the books, but in many places they were hard to read. Laura’s life was charming and simple, but not at all easy.

There was one winter in particular where her family faced the very real possibility of either freezing or starving to death.  It seemed only a matter of which would come first.  What has been wonderful about reading the Little House stories with Sean is that he can then look around and see his nice warm house with a full pantry and see how blessed he is.  He is able to come to this conclusion on his own which is much more effective than his parents haranguing at him, “You don’t know how good you have it. You have everything. You should be grateful. Blah. Blah. Grateful. Blah.”

In one of the Little House books, it is Christmastime and it has been a typically challenging winter.  Laura and her sister are expecting nothing, certainly nothing big, but on Christmas morning they each receive a tin cup, a peppermint, a little heart-shaped cake Ma had made, and a penny. And the only reason they got those things is because a neighbor risked his life to get across an icy river to bring it to them.

There was such beauty in that scene – in the selflessness of the neighbor, in the absence of expectation and entitlement, in the smallness of the gifts, in the delight of the children.  I have since wondered if we don’t deny ourselves that beauty in our quest for big things.

So this year there will be some nice things for Sean under our tree, if not big things.

But also this year, and every year after, there will be a box with a tin cup, little heart-shaped cake, a peppermint and a penny.

About 14 years ago, I bought a huge, down-filled, ridiculously expensive Henredon sofa. I had it made in this exquisite blood red damask fabric and it was a vision of beauty for all who laid eyes or butts upon it.

Luckily, I bought the sofa before I met AD because he would never authorize that kind of spending.  Not so lucky is that it never occurred to me that once you spend that kind of money on a sofa, you are loath to ever get rid of it. And trust me on this:  There is not a sofa on the planet that you will want to keep your entire life.

Well why not just get it recovered you might ask? And that is a reasonable question. The problem is that I could buy a brand new sofa and maybe even a few other things for what it will cost me to have it recovered.  It will require a substantial outlay of cash and outlaying of cash is just not in our immediate or foreseeable future.

So then, right now I have a formerly glorious red sofa that has turned a sad shade of pink from the sun and suffers a terminal case of thread rot. And if I may be honest, the giant expensive, formerly glorious, now ugly sofa is really getting on my nerves.  Every time I walk through my living room, it pains me to look at it.  It is the Norma Desmond of the sofa world.

Last week, as I was pulling into the neighborhood I saw a Thomasville truck in front of my neighbor’s house and two men were hauling in a houseful of brand new furniture. I slowed to gawk at the spectacle of it all.  And I may have pressed my nose against the car window and drooled just a little.  I coveted. Oh yes I did. I coveted with a vengeance.

With a heart drenched in envy, I continued around the block towards home, driving past the house of a woman whom I only knew in passing. But she doesn’t live there anymore. She lost her battle to cancer about this time last year leaving behind a husband and a ten-year-old boy.

Maybe she left behind a really nice sofa.  Or maybe hers had thread rot too. I don’t know.  But either way, it didn’t matter.  She left it all behind.

* * *

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.  For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.   Matthew 6:19~21

Uncle Claude was already in his late 70s when I came into the family about 13 years ago.  He passed away about a year or so before Sean was born.  Many things bring Uncle Claude to mind, but nothing more so than Veteran’s Day.

The first time I met him was on a warm November afternoon.  AD had taken me to Tuna to meet the family for the first time and one of the first people he wanted me to meet was his Uncle Claude, the man who had been like a father to him after his own father died when he was a young boy.

That afternoon, the three of us took off and played a round of golf and what I learned about him that day was that he was a quiet man loathe to draw attention to himself, that he played a mean game of golf and that he had a razor sharp dry wit to the delight of those agile enough to keep pace.

What I didn’t know about him on that particular day was that he had hoped to play professional baseball before he was called away to serve in World War II when he was eighteen.

I didn’t know that as a 19-year-old boy, he had survived the D-Day invasion on Omaha Beach at Normandy and then later the Battle of the Bulge – two of the most horrifically bloody and casualty-laden battles in American military history.

I didn’t know that later he had ridden through the streets of Paris with de Gaulle as Parisians cheered for her liberators. I didn’t know that he had received a Purple Heart after an enemy’s bullet left him with a shattered elbow and unable to fully extend his right arm for the rest of his life.

And I will never know the horror and hardship he suffered without complaint for my freedom.

Claude lived his life in such a way that very few people knew that he had served America with such honor and valor. He returned home and quietly carried on.

Uncle Claude was not just a hero to a young fatherless boy, but he was a genuine American hero, and remains so to all who enjoy her freedoms.

Saturday morning, Sean’s soccer team played against the German Nationals and it was no surprise that they were thoroughly trounced. Those German’s are good at soccer and not nearly as tall as you might think.  The score was something like 782 to 0, but our guys took no notice thusly living out the principal that it’s not whether you win or lose, as long as there are snacks.

There’s no sorrow that a Moon Pie can’t sooth.

In spite of the loss, Saturday afternoon turned out to be fabulously beautiful, sunny and mild, so after the game Sean and AD took off on foot around the neighborhood looking for someone to come out and play.  They rang four or five doorbells but everyone was busy or gone, so they returned home in the second defeat of the day.

Not wanting to miss the glory of the day, we drove to a nearby park that has a big playground and a trail that runs alongside a nature preserve and a creek.  We walked the trail together, the three of us, pretending to be explorers. We hopped back and forth across the creek and in and out and through the brush, stopping occasionally to dig treasures out of the mud.  In Sean’s world this kind of outing trumps Six Flags and Disney World all rolled into one.

As we walked back to the car in the glow of a fading sun, I watched Sean gallop ahead of us.  He had a short rope that he had found that he was swinging over his head like a lariat.  He was singing some church song off key in little boy falsetto. Yellow leaves rained down around us and the warm November air smelled sweet of damp earth and decaying leaves.  And it seemed in that moment, that we were complete, that we lacked absolutely nothing.

As older parents of an only child, sometimes we are hyper-sensitive to the fact that Sean’s primary playmates are us, two middle-aged goofballs who adore him.  And that seems a little sad.  Sometimes we feel sort of sorry for him that he doesn’t have built-in playmates in siblings or that he can’t open his front door to find a mob of kids to play with as we did when we were growing up.  These days, it seems that everyone is at lessons.

But the fact of the matter is, the sense of loss is felt only by us. For Sean, in this season of his life, he would rather be with us, such that we are, than with anyone else in the whole world. And there is nothing in that to count as loss.

In his famous poem Ode to Immortality, Wordsworth wrote that our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.

I’ve always loved that imagery. I love the idea that at one time, in some unknown form, we dwelled with God, that we communed intimately with him, knew every line in his face, the softness of his hands, the sound of his voice, the warmth of his embrace.

And then we were born.

No wonder we come into this world wailing.

As we are awakening to a new world, we are dying to another.  Every minute of life carries us further away from whence we came; the older we get, the less we remember of it.

Last Sunday evening during Children’s Bible Hour, the children were asked to draw a picture of God.  Sean immediately got to work. There was no question in his mind what God looked like.

The teacher called him to the front of the class and asked him to talk about his picture.  He held it up and told an audience of 30 or so children with confidence that he thinks God is a happy face in the sky with a beard and some swirly lines.

The teacher nodded and said with a sigh that he was sure there was a message behind his picture. Sean shook his head. “There’s no message behind the picture,” he said and then he showed the teacher the back of his paper.  Blank.  No message.

The next day, as we were eating breakfast, I saw the drawing at the end of the breakfast bar. I picked it up and looked at it again.  I asked Sean to tell me more about it.  “Well,” he said pointing his fork, “The smiley face with the beard represents God and the swirly lines are a gust of wind.”

I was intrigued by the idea of God as a gust of wind.

As I looked at the picture, I thought of how many times God has drawn near to his people in the form of wind – sometimes in a violent gust like in Acts 2:2 and other times as gentle as a whisper as in 1 Kings 19:12.

I thought of how the Greek word pneuma is used to mean both wind and spirit and how the Hebrew word ruah is used to convey both wind and spirit but also breath – the very essence of life.

And then I thought that maybe he has not yet travelled so very far from whence he came.

And I wanted to stand just a little bit closer to him.

* * *

More esoterical musings on the nature of God from my She Speaks peeps over here.

About a year ago, Sean’s grandmother gave him a money jar which sits on top of his dresser. It is a big plastic jar that looks like a pickle jar, only it has a slot on the top which shows a digital reading of how much money has been deposited.  The digital reading is about as accurate as taking a wild guess, or basically the same formula we are using to determine the actual cost of national healthcare.

Be that as it may…

Like his father, Sean likes to hold on to his money, so after a year of saving, the jar was half full with about $40, mostly in change.  Some of the money he earned from his towel folding business but most was given to him with impunity from recalcitrant grandparents, aunts, uncles and other nice people.

Last week my favorite five-year-old was in a growth spurt or something was up because we had some attitude and obedience issues.  Normally he is a pretty compliant and polite little guy and doesn’t delight in giving me too much trouble. Which works out well for him since I don’t abide much nonsense.

But, last week there was an incident involving the carpet in his bedroom.  I won’t say what the offense was because I don’t think anyone deserves to have their misdeeds recorded for all the internets to analyze and comment upon forever amen.  But it wasn’t an accident; it was premeditated, willful and on purpose. An accident I can easily forgive because who among us hasn’t knocked over a perfume display in Sanger Harris? Accidents happen. But this was no accident.

I was in a quandary as to what to do about the incident because it was so far out of character for this child. I was really interested in getting to the bottom of why he would do such a thing more so than issuing a swift punishment.

I was baffled.  I took a day or so to figure out how to proceed.  The side benefit of this delay was that it allowed him to stew just a little and meditate upon his actions.

Finally, I recalled that one time my brother shot out the neighbor’s picture window with his BB gun and I believe my parents made him pay to replace it.  My brother is not now, nor has he ever been in jail, so I decided to go the personal responsibility route.  Rather than punishment, I decided that the appropriate thing to do was to have him take responsibility for his actions and make him pay to have the carpet cleaned. And that meant I would have to confiscate his money.

He cried when I told him I would have to take his money to pay for the carpet cleaning.  “I was saving that money for an iPhone!” he wailed.  I told him that was really sad with as much sympathy as I could muster. And then I took away his money.

The rest of the week passed with no further incident.  And although I never got to the bottom of why he did what he did, I did see in him a contrite heart. He was sorry.  So Saturday, I took all the silver coins and the dollars to pay for the carpet cleaning, but I let him have his pennies back for seed money for his iPhone.

AD and I talk to Sean a lot about spending and saving so that he might grow into a financially responsible man. But we have some concern that because he lives a privileged life, that he doesn’t know what it is to want and to wait and to do without — which in our view are not bad things.

So sometimes, in an effort to remind Sean of how good he has it, AD will tell him that when he was growing up, he just wanted to have enough money to be able to get a snack out of the vending machine at school. That was his idea of being rich.  But you know, these kinds of stories tend to fall on deaf ears.  All they hear is “Iwalkedtoschooluphillbothwaysthreefeetofsnowblahblah”.

We are genetically programmed to say these things.  We cannot stop ourselves.

This morning, for the first time in 11 years, AD’s work took him out of the house to work on a project.  All Sean has ever known is AD working in his office upstairs.  So this morning, as AD was heading for the door, dressed and carrying his brief case, it shocked us all just a little.  Sean stopped him and asked him to wait.  He disappeared into his room and when he came back, he handed AD a fistful of pennies. “Here you go dad, in case you want to buy a snack out of the vending machine.”

So, maybe he was listening after all.

I’m not really sure what in the heck happened here this past week.  I think we might all be going to through a growth spurt.

Note: Sean is not getting an iPhone until he can buy me one too.

Even if everything around you is falling apart.

This massive tree is growing skyward,  seemingly unaware that half of its root system is exposed. The path that runs alongside this tree is a good six feet below the base of the tree, so as I walked along the path, I was looking up into its tangle of roots. And yet it grows. It reminded me that if we are rooted deeply enough, we can flourish and grow in less than ideal circumstances.

The other day I was chatting with an aquaintance when his cell phone rang.

He reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out the phone and checked the number.

“Just a minute,” he said holding up his index finger, “It’s my son.”

No problem.  They chatted for a few minutes while I stared at the ground and then my cuticles and then the ground some more.  By the lilt and chatter of the conversation, it was apparent to me that there was no real emergency, but whatever, it made no difference to me.

When he snapped the phone shut, he said proudly, “That was my son. I’m always available when he calls.”

To which I responded, “Oh.”

After we finished our conversation, I got in my car and drove off.

And as I drove away I began to mull over what had just happened.  I wasn’t offended that he took the call, not at all, but I recalled that his son is in his mid-20s and lives in another state.  And then I wondered at what point, as a parent, should we stop being always available to our children.

And then I laughed to myself because I was thinking somewhere around the age of four.