fatherhood

Farewell (For Now)

/ J. Thorp / 4 Comments

As a boy, I liked to stand on my head. It was only natural, I suppose — I was built like a caramel apple, more stable when inverted. First I learned to hunker down with my hands on the floor and my knees behind my elbows, then tip forward into a head-and-hands tripod, and slowly extend my skinny legs. I would wobble and sweat and then do my best to make my final tip-over seem controlled and intentional.

As I got stronger, I kept my legs together and controlled my descents. As I got stronger still, I would start by lying on my belly with my hands in pushup position, the elevate my hips into pike, smoothly drawing my toes along the floor until my torso was inverted, then open like a jackknife to point them at the ceiling.

After that, I began to time myself. The well-worn carpet in my childhood living room provided little cushion, so at first this was not easy. Two minutes. Five minutes. Ten minutes or more. I learned to relax unnecessary muscles and shift my weight slightly to my hands to relieve the pressure on my head. It got to the point that I could watch TV to pass the time.

Then I stopped. It wasn’t that I had “maxxed out,” strained my neck, or switched to handstands. It was fun to learn, fun to perfect, fun to challenge myself for awhile — but I just didn’t see much sense in it anymore. Today, I can still stand on my head on demand (and I do so now and again, just to prove it to the kids). But I feel better with my feet beneath me.

I’ve told myself and proclaimed on this blog that I am a writer, and that I’m working on a book. I have done a fair amount of reading, and very little writing. Aside from our annual Christmas letters, I write virtually nothing of interest to anyone I love. I am not a writer, but a director of communications. I am also a father and a husband, and blessed to be so — but most of my waking hours are spent standing on my head for a living, looking at the world in a way that’s begun to feel unnatural. I do it because I can, I do it on demand — but it doesn’t seem to make sense anymore.

In the parlance of my peers, I need to “re-tool.” I don’t know what’s next. I won’t call myself a writer again until I write something worthwhile, and I don’t know what it will be. But I am eliminating distractions, one by one. This blog, though I have loved it, is one of the things that will go.

This is my last post for the foreseeable future. This blog will taken offline soon. If you wish me well, wish me luck.

Top 10 Highlights Of Camp Lebanon 2012

/ J. Thorp / 2 Comments

http://www.facebook.com/v/3953178462416
Rose’s zip line ride: see number 5, below…

Every year for the past five or so, Jodi and I and the kids have joined 30 or so families from St. Michael’s and St. Albert’s parishes at a camp near Upsala, Minnesota, called Camp Lebanon. The first year I didn’t want to go, a) because with a dining hall, water toys, and showers, it wasn’t really camping; b) because I was going to be surrounded by kids not my own; and c) because I didn’t feel like I knew enough people and wasn’t looking forward to being “on” all weekend.

All true observations…none of which had any impact on my actual enjoyment of the weekend. We’ve been going back ever since, and even organized it a couple of years.

No time to do a complete recap of the weekend, but here are the Top 10 Highlights:

10. Not My Job! I had hoped to be done with my work early on Friday so we could be on the road by 3 p.m. or so. Not even close, and when 4 p.m. rolled around and I was still packing, my blood pressure started to rise.

Then I remembered: We’re not running things this year. We can get up there any time before tomorrow, and it’s all good.

Turns out we made it in plenty of time for Friday evening activities — and with Lily this year, it’s a good thing we weren’t the organizers! Kudos to Sustaceks, Duerrs, and Fredricksons for a great weekend!

9. New Faces. We missed a number of dear friends who weren’t there…but there were so many new families, too, that you couldn’t help but make new connections. I met potential homebrewers, Axis and Allies enthusiasts, future KCs, and just all-around good guys — hopefully next year the old and the new will all show up, and then some!

8. Albany Invasion. Albany, Minnesota, is the last stop for food on the way to the camp. A gas station just off the freeway houses A&W, Subway, Godfather’s Pizza, Taco John’s, and Chester’s Fried Chicken counters under one roof — and Friday afternoon, it hosted nearly every family bound for Camp Lebanon in constant rotation. I’m sure the locals had to be wondering about the volume of strangers greeting each other with hugs and handshakes.

7. Has Anyone Seen… Once we settle in at camp, the kids are off and running with their friends. Jodi and I ate with grown-ups and Lily, and generally soaked up the weekend, only rousing ourselves occasionally to ask around, “Has anyone seen [CHILD’S NAME HERE]?” And we were hardly the only ones.

6. Holy Spirit at Work. More than once, someone stopped to share that the weekend itself, or something someone did or said, was just what they needed — that the Holy Spirit was at work last weekend. But the most striking example came on Sunday morning, when one of my own overextended children decided to disobey Jodi and run off to play with friends. I confronted the child and had a long talk about the responsibilities that come with being family — and I thought it sunk in. Only a few minutes later, a local seminarian, Paul, offered a scripture reflection in which he talked about how family is diminished when one person acts selfishly — and I looked over to see wide, staring, glassy eyes. I asked about it later, and was told, “I heard him and I was like, “Seriously?!” Wow.

5. Zip Line! I watched two grown men race over a wooded ravine, brazen in their talk but white in their knuckles. I watched our priest and seminarian zip through the tree tops — Father was pounding his chest; Paul was all smiles and thumbs up. But best of all, I watched Emma nervously strap up after watching the men, whimpering and sighing a bit under her breath; watched her set out across the ravine tentatively, and watched her slide back over, screaming and giggling, barely able to speak “That was awesome!” to the camera. She is the only Thorp to have done it so far. She deserves applause.

4. Dating Survey. A few friends began asking an unofficial survey question of the couples at camp: “Do you and your spouse go on dates?” Jodi said, “Not really.” I said, “Occasionally.” Then we both said, “Unless running errands or getting groceries alone together count.” The ruling came back: if we are specifically going together and leaving the kids behind, it counts. Oh, yes, we are still romantic!

3. Early Morning Run. Brendan rose at 6:45 a.m. on a Saturday to go running with a few of the guys from school — and a few girls. I rose a little after 7, and when I emerged from the bathhouse, they were coming the hill from the lake: four or five girls, graceful and light on their feet, and two clomping boys bringing up the rear. Turns out the girls were all cross-country runners, and the two wrestlers were the only boys motivated enough to get up that early. What motivated them to keep pace with the fleet-footed young ladies over two or three miles? I’m going with sheer stubborn pride…though at that age, who can guess? (For an alternative explanation, see the video below…)

2. Family Prayer. Family rosaries each night, and Saturday evening mass with sunbaked parents and waterlogged kids doing their best to be reverent. Families praying together with families. There’s nothing better, except…

1. Serenading Lily. Every year we listen to The White Stripes on the way to the camp. This year Lily was fussing until the guitars and drums kicked in, and, to a person, all four of her siblings began to sing to her.

Wish I could’ve recorded them doing it — leaning over her car seat, almost in harmony, and her grinning, gasping, laughing face. She’s pretty good-looking (for a girl).

Our Monsterpiece

/ J. Thorp / 3 Comments
The Eyes Have It: Lily at a fundraiser dinner, taking it all in. That’s not Jodi holding her…she sucked in countless others that evening to do her bidding. (Photo: Michelle LeMonds at Michelle LeMonds Photography)
monsterpiece – n. – a perfectly created monster;
the pinnacle of a monster-maker’s handiwork*

She drinks you with those eyes. Draws you near in dumb adoration, cute-struck, closer and closer. Her spit-shined pink lips part in an open-mouth smile, toothless except on bottom, and saliva pools on her dimpled chin. She’s close enough now you can smell her baby-ness; she’s reaching with her long little fingers for your clothes, your hair, whatever she can grasp, all giggles and gasping shrieks of delight.
She’s got you.
* * * * *
In earlier December, I made the following prediction: “[W]e are having our tomboy, an active girl of about 10 pounds (plus or minus two ounces; 9-15 like her daddy would be just fine), 21 inches long or so. She’s gonna sleep alright, but when she starts moving about, she’ll be our first climber. We shall have our hands full. She will have a Thorp head, of course, and Jodi’s hazel eyes that look green in the right light.”

Dad always cautioned me that when it comes to children, “you get what you expect.” Six days after the official prediction, we were blessed with Lily, who emerged a little lighter (9 pounds, 4 ounces) and a little longer (23-1/2 inches), but very much an active girl and every bit a handful, with a Thorp head and captivating eyes. She sleeps alright, by which I mean not great, and she is fickle, demanding, and persistent. Perhaps we didn’t get a tomboy, but a diva…
 
* * * * *

If she sees you, then loses sight, she cries. If you initiate eye contact or conversation, then look away or fall silent, she cries. If you pick her up only to put her down – whether in her car seat or among her toys – she cries. If you hold her close and sit, she wants to stand; if you stand, she wants to move…and again, if you look her in the eye, don’t be the first to look away. She cries.

Until two weeks ago she refused to take bottle. She wanted to nurse, exclusively and often, and would accept no substitute. To give Jodi a moment’s peace, for the first time in five children, we decided to try a pacifier. She bit it and spit it out. 

Finally her insatiable appetite got the best of her; now she demands the bottle. And when she wants it she wants it: four ounces at a minimum, no matter how much she’s nursed. Sometimes she still screams when you give it to her, but just try to take it from her…she cannot get it to her face on her own, but lie her on her back and she will clasp it to her chest with both hands. Sometimes if you try to help, she gets agitated — but step away, and invariably she will drop it and scream.

She won’t swallow baby cereal. She’ll eat a little pureed green beans, grimacing and shuddering the whole way — as though she knows the adage, “That which does not kill you makes you stronger.”

Whereas Trevor often insisted, verbally and mentally, the world match his ideas about it, Lily makes it so. We’ve tried to wait her out when she gets owly. Thus far she appears to have more time than we do. She’s like a first-quality air-raid siren: made to be heard in the worst conditions, and just as loud an hour or more later.

* * * * *

And she knows what she likes. One night while pacing the kitchen, trying to get her to sleep, I found myself unable to keep from nuzzling the black fuzz on the back of her head. Our other kids would duck away when I do this – they couldn’t stand the prickliness of my clipped goatee. Lily, by contrast, moved her head slowly side to side against my whiskers, then pressed it deliberately into my chin. I turned away, then back to her; again she rubbed her head on my chin, then leaned hard against it. 

Over time, she began to put her bare cheek against my whiskers, then her open mouth, and now, her nose and rapidly blinking eyes. She can barely stand it, but she persists nonetheless. That which does not kill you…

* * * * *

Will she be a climber? Time will tell. She is strong; she rolls easily, quickly, and repeatedly, and as of last week, spins quickly on her belly to orient herself toward whatever she desires, then arm-crawls across any terrain. If she reaches her objective, she grasps and consumes it, first with her eyes, then with her gaping, smiling mouth, toothless except on the bottom.

She’s our monsterpiece. As I’ve said countless times now: “Good thing she’s cute…”

Daddy’s Girls: Y’all realize the only thing keeping Lily where she’s at is the friction of my whiskers on her fuzzy little head — that’s why my head is tilted to hers. Not snuggling…nosiree! (Photo: Katrina Nielsen at Spiritus Capere Photography)

——

 
*”Monsterpiece” was coined by Rose and me a few weeks back, specifically to describe Lily.

No Greater Gift

/ J. Thorp / 8 Comments

Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were younger, you used to dress yourself and go where you wanted; but when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.— John 21:18

Some years ago I brought our son Brendan, then in grade school, to work with me for the day. Among other activities that day, he drew a picture for a dear friend of my own dear friend Patty — a young man who had recently enrolled at United States Military Academy My son had already been thinking for some time about a career in the military, and it excited him to know that there were colleges specifically geared toward such things. He sent the drawing and his best wishes to West Point, and began to shape his own dreams around the U.S. Naval Academy and the Marine Corps.

Over Memorial Day weekend, Patty was herself at West Point for her young friend’s graduation and commissioning. She shared photos with us from throughout the weekend, and the boy who left home four years ago has become very much a fine young man, fit and confident, dashing in his India whites. Brendan was impressed.

I remember once sharing with a different colleague that Brendan hoped to be a Marine one day. His response? “Well, at least you have a few years to talk him out of that…”

As Brendan prepares to enter high school in the fall, I think more frequently about the possibility that he could be called to combat one day, and it frightens me. But someone has to do this job, and if he is called, who am I to refuse to let him answer, when I have benefited so much from the lives of those who have gone before?

* * * * *

Around the same time that Brendan was drawing that picture, Gabe began seriously contemplating the priesthood. Admittedly, at age seven or so, seriously contemplating may be defined rather loosely — but  today he is approaching his twelfth birthday and has not wavered. This spring, recognizing that I hadn’t spent much one-on-one time with Gabe in recent months, I offered a day in which we could do whatever he wanted. As a result, we found ourselves at Sunday morning Mass at St. John Vianney Seminary in St. Paul, at the end of which Fr. Michael, the rector and our former pastor, introduced him as “a future priest, Father Gabriel.” We were greeted by a dozen or so seminarians afterward, including a couple from our neck of the woods, then we went to brunch with Father.

During brunch Father and I both made an effort to include Gabe in the conversation, but several times the discussion turned to more “grown-up” topics: men’s evangelization, stewardship, work and home life. I apologized to Gabe on the way home for not doing a better job of steering the conversation to include him.

“It’s not a problem,” he said. “I learn a lot listening to you guys talk.”

I see him, hear him, in these situations, and think he’s serious about this vocation. Father thinks he is, too. I’ve written about this before … and a friend characterized the religious life, in her view, as a sort of “performance art,” which I took to mean richly symbolic and interesting, but ultimately strange, impractical, and somewhat meaningless. Needless to say, I disagree.

* * * * *

A year or more ago, an an older man I know learned that these two sons of mine aspired to the military and the priesthood. “How old are they?” he asked, and when I answered, said, “That says something, that they are thinking seriously about service at such an early age. You must be proud.”

I am. And frightened. For both of them.

Then yesterday a mutual friend of Patty’s and mine stopped me in a stairwell at the university to ask how the long weekend was. “And what’d you think of Patty’s photos?” she asked.

I told her they hit me hard, in a way I hadn’t expected. Those photos, coupled with Memorial Day and the knowledge that two priest-friends of mine are being reassigned to new parishes (our associate pastor is one; Prairie Father is the other), made me think not only about service and sacrifice, which are hard but noble things, but also about obedience, which for Americans, it seems, and men in particular, can be tougher to stomach.

Both of my older sons currently feel called to a life I don’t believe I could lead — a life of obedience in which the very clothing they wear will publicly signify that they are subject to a higher authority and held to a higher standard. Should they continue on their respective paths, they will be scrutinized and criticized; assigned relentless, sometimes monotonous, work; bear impossible burdens; and pour out their life-blood, figuratively and possibly literally, for people who may or may not appreciate or acknowledge their sacrifice.

This alone would be too much to wrap my air-conditioned, pillow-padded mind around…and then I think of the confidence our leaders inspire in me. Am I confident that my oldest son won’t be sent marching into Hell for political gain? I am not. Am I confident my middle son will be able to shepherd his flock without getting crosswise of a government and a society who has little use for Truth and even less for faith? Not at all.

And they will be expected to serve, to sacrifice, to obey, regardless. I don’t know if I would be strong enough to do that. I pray to God that my sons are better men than their father.

* * * * *

In addition to observing Memorial Day, we’ve also celebrated the Feasts of the Ascension and Pentecost — Christ’s Great Commission before returning to His heavenly Father and the descent of the Holy Spirit so the disciples could carry out that commission. On Ascension Sunday, our deacon spoke in terms of graduation to describe the bittersweetness of Jesus’s departure, and it makes sense: Christ Himself was “graduating” from his earthly ministry to assume his true heavenly kingship, but so, too, were the Apostles about to leave behind what they knew (or thought they knew) before to answer a deeper call and become something greater still — a new Body of Christ on Earth.

Then on Pentecost, our associate pastor related the story of his ordination as a transitional deacon (on the way to priestly ordination) — how, in our archdiocese, those seminarians being ordained begin in the pews seated next to their families, then at a certain point, are called forward before the altar and “never return again.” They are no longer the men they once were, but are public persons and servants of Christ.

Reflecting on his words brought to mind a Scripture passage that has often troubled me:

And another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell to my family at home.” [To him] Jesus said, “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.” — Luke 9:61-62

In the past this passage has felt almost heartless, but in the context of Father’s story, it began to make sense to me.

Once we are called to something — a vocation, an act of love, and opportunity in life to do real good and to do it well, we should act immediately and rejoice in doing so. As believers, in particular, we should have confidence that God is working for the good of all, and that not one of His sheep will be lost or wasted. In this light, my sons should rush headlong into the unknown, provided they are heeding the Master’s call.

The road that stretches before the feet of a man is a challenge to his heart long before it tests the strength of his legs. Our destiny is to run to the edge of the world and beyond, off into the darkness: sure for all our blindness, secure for all our helplessness, strong for all our weakness, gaily in love for all the pressure on our hearts. — My Way of Life: The Summa Simplified

Go get ’em, boys.

How Many Kids Does It Take to Kill a Spider?

/ J. Thorp / 2 Comments

The other day, Trevor was talking to Emma, matter-of-factly, about the spider that lives behind the door in the downstairs bathroom.

“Kids,” I said, “if you can say, ‘Y’know the spider that lives behind the door…’ it’s been there too long.”

“It’s a daddy long-legs,” offered Emma, helpfully.

“A daddy long-legs is a hunter and doesn’t stay in one place,” I countered, unsure as to why it mattered. “It’s probably one of those long-legged cobweb spiders we find in the basement. It should be gotten rid of.”

Skeletal critters. Creepy.

“It helped me get over my fear of spiders,” said Trevor. “Gabe, too. He talked to it, and wasn’t afraid anymore. So did I.”

Too cute, but I persisted: “It’s gotta go. Gabe, will you take care of it?”

Gabe swallowed hard. “Uh. Sure.” He looked sick.

“They don’t live that long, so it’s probably not the same spider.”

“It’s not that,” he said. “I don’t mind killing it, except that I don’t like killing — squishing — anything!”

“I don’t care if you catch it in a cup and let it outside, but it’s gotta go,” I said. “See what you can do.”

He goes downstairs, and I hear him fumbling around. Sigh.

“Brendan!” I call. “Help Gabe if he needs it, okay?”

“‘Kay.”

More fumbling behind the door, and muffled voices, then I hear Brendan: “C’mon Gabe! It’s the only way he’ll get to spider heaven! You’re helping him!”

Not exactly what I had in mind.