kids

Gourmet or Gross-Out?

/ J. Thorp / 1 Comment

Sometimes in the hustle of the day-care day, Jodi lets the older kids help out by making their own lunches. So a few weeks back, she told Gabe he could make a sandwich, and he did.

After he cleared his dishes, she asked how the sandwich was. “Pretty good,” he said, “except for one thing. I’m not sure if it was the grape jelly, the mustard, or the Cheezits.”

My money was on the jelly, but the more culinarily adventurous among my co-workers said they could imagine jelly and mustard being complementary. I asked Gabe what he thought, and his best guess was the Cheezits. I asked what else was on it: turkey, spinach, and colby-jack cheese.

The Cheezits, I gathered, were for texture …

Greetings From the North Pole, Part VI

/ J. Thorp / 5 Comments

Blogger’s Note: Over Christmas 2003, we became annual pen-pals with an elf named Siberius Quill, and he has again delivered this year! Transcriptions of the 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007 letters from Quill can be seen here.

My dearest Children!

My, but the World is snowy where you live—White Christmas indeed! This is the weather Father Christmas likes: the sleigh runners slick with frost, and thick powder to soften and silence the landing. Kris Kringle should make good time tonight!

You are Good Children, one and all—obedient, respectful, joy-filled, and loving. Good Eggs, your Father might say; we say Good Apples, and you stand in sharp contrast to the Bad Apples, who “spoil the whole bunch,” as they say. Oh, you have your naughty moments, as all Young People do, but these moments of mischief and misbehavior are Lessons, one and all. Your Conscience speaks the Truth—it tells you Right from Wrong—and should you fail to hear It, your parents correct you, all as it Should Be. In that, you are Very Lucky.

Young Master Trevor, your laughter and shouts while opening your Christmas Eve gifts resound clear to the Auroras! Bless my soul, but you make a Joyous Noise! And as we are not bound by Time at the Pole (our nature being magical and the Earth’s rotation here being rather instantaneous), I am able to report that your happiness rang in the ears of Santa’s reindeer and was much-loved. It sparks them the fly high and pull hard! And your singing has caught the ear of our elfin Songmaster, Jovial Moralus, who ensures we elves have Proper Music to work by. Old Jove said your voice would raise the spirits of the most frostbit soul—some elves sing for centuries and never earn such high praise as that!

And Miss Emma—you grow lovelier each winter, and have become Quite The Help around the house. We could use such a hand as you in Santa’s Workshop—the tools get in such disarray during the busy days before Christmas Eve. The Tool-Mistress and Chief Shop-Keep, Methody Straitner, has been hard at work for years organizing the tools and benches and bins to ensure Peak Efficiency. She has seen your handiwork in the kitchen cupboard, and deems you a Natural!

Master Gabriel: I must compliment your question about the existence of frost dragons. Father Christmas and I are both honoured that you would entrust such a question—regarding the Very Existence of a Great Something you’ve never seen—to us, when we know your friends and neighbors have questioned our own Very Existence! I fear, however, that I cannot give you certainty. There is one among My People, a most adventuresome elf called Articus Chippenhammer, who left the Nail Corps when so many toys shifted from wood to plastic. His great-grandfather was a paleomythologist of some reknown, and Chippenhammer has since put his hammer to work exploring the Polar Wastes for signs of such Legends as Abominable Snowcreatures, Sasquatches, Frost Dragons, and the like. It is slow work, chipping away at millenia of rock and ice looking for Mere Fragments of white bone, hair or scales, and after decades of digging he’s found Nothing Conclusive yet.

And finally, B. You are strong, smart and responsible, and have done a remarkable job in your First Year helping your Family bring Christmas to fruition. Well done! A generous heart and a willingness to serve others will serve you well in life, Eldest Brother. Remember the Bishop of Myra, St. Nicholas, and Christ Himself, as your examples, and you will Have Love and Be Loved.

Happy Christmas to you and your family, and Safe Travels to your Busia and Dziadzi. God Bless You and your Family. I wish you All the Best in the New Year—and Always!

Yours truly,

Siberius Quill

Fear of Death

/ J. Thorp / Leave a comment

Blogger’s Note: Have you ever, in the urgency and heat of a conversation, been pushed to consolidate and analyze a pattern of thinking you’ve been victim to for some time and share your findings before you’re certain they are fully baked? Well, I had that experience today. A dear friend was alarmed, in the midst of great blessings, to be suddenly afraid of death. As an emotional, navel-gazing kind of guy, I’ve been down this path more than once, so I worked to put my own cycle into words. And now it seems a part of a larger conversation, involving this post of mine and this post from our friend Deacon Tyler. Forgive the rambling and lofty sentence structures; I’ve been listening to St. Augustine during my commute these past few days. Now, onto the limb — here’s what I replied …

Yes, I do know somewhat of what you speak, I think. And sometimes these feelings are worse in moments of clarity and great joy, when you can see so vividly all you’ve been given (however unworthily!) and all you have to lose. At least, that’s been my case …

For me, the fear oscillates between that of an early death (before I’ve managed to complete what I view in that moment as my earthly duties) and the sudden loss of all that I have (namely, my wife and children) while I yet live. Both fears are more vivid in times of abundant blessing — a dark temptation to take no joy in joy: in one case, out of a natural but short-sighted tendency to cling to what we have without reference to (or reverence for) greater goods to come, and in the other case, to a natural but ill-conceived effort to steel ourselves against possible tragedy (however improbable) which, if taken too far, may lead us to view our blessings as curses (i.e., “Why am I burdened with such wonderful things I can only hope to lose?”).

When fearing an early death, I often want to abandon my livelihood and take my family to a mountaintop (as you’ve heard me say before!) where I can spend all my time eking out an existence, loving my wife, and teaching my children exactly what they need to survive and live uprightly — never mind the fact that Jodi would not regard such a retreat as an act of love, and I scarcely know how to survive and live uprightly myself, let alone how to teach such things. By living we learn — not by retiring.

When fearing the untimely loss of my family, I begin to imagine how I would react. It’s invariably heroic in its first draft — I soldier on, sorrowful and stoic — but with even a second’s worth of consideration, the smallest pinch of realism, I see my emotionally charged self falling utterly apart, at least for a time. How long? Who can tell? — I quickly conclude (true or not) that I’ve never been tested by want or direct and personal tragedy, and may well curl up in a ball and die myself. How unmanly! And I see my wife: so strong in faith, rock-solid, unyielding, and quickly conclude (true or not) that, were the tables turned, she would, in fact, soldier on, sorrowful and stoic. Why, if I were to die suddenly …

… and thus we return to the fear of an early death.

Life and death, that great unknown, is a deep, deep rabbit hole, into which some descend and never emerge. Better, perhaps, to stand at the edge and drop pebbles down, as we did as children, listening to see if and when they struck bottom, than to dig too deeply and collapse the whole thing upon us. A favorite (and to my knowledge, an original) saying on these subjects: We seek to explain the hell out of everything and explain the heaven out of it in the process. Or something like that.

Faith and doubt can both be gifts in moments like these — faith that, independent of what we do (or don’t do), the world and those we love move toward their proper end and all is (or will be) right in the world; and doubt that the proper end can ever be reached without our hand at the till or the oar, which may make us rethink our priorities and love each other more and better.

But the fear never leaves me entirely — and I feel everyday that I can never accomplish what I want, or what I should, or (some days) even what I must. I can only accomplish what I can, and thus far, it’s been just enough.

Halloween Less of Mayhem, More of Magic

/ J. Thorp / 3 Comments
Blogger’s Note: This originally ran as a column in Tuesday, October 27, 1998, edition of The Pioneer daily newspaper, Big Rapids, Michigan. Our oldest was 11 months; he’s almost 11 now. Time flies, but as I drove home, I looked west to see the orange skies behind bare-bones trees, and got that old feeling again …

I spent the best Halloweens on Littlefield Lake in the woods between Barryton and Clare. Back then the neighborhood was less densely populated and surrounded on all sides by woods — mournful willows, tall creaking poplars, dank cedars with their long toes awash in swamp water — and Halloween night fell black as coal. The winds tossed harried handfuls of leaves high into the air; clouds blew like smoke across the sky and bare tree limbs rattled like old bones.

We all trick-or-treated together — hobos and monsters, clowns and devils. Usually my sister and I would head down the hill at dusk to the first stop; from there our motley troop would gain members until four or so stops down the way, just as darkness was setting in, we’d be marching 10 to 15 strong, going from house to house snatching candy treats from little old ladies with bluing hair and kindly old white-haired men (the result of our frightful appearances, no doubt).

Our parents followed a block or so behind, talking amongst themselves. Jack-o-lanterns grinned like skulls from nearly every porch, casting flickering shadows on the walk, and eyes wide with anticipation, we could hardly keep from running house to house.

There were those stops along the route we came away with a handful of change, or an apples, or raisins. There were those houses that sat quiet and dark, oblivious to the dread crew marauding the subdivision in search of food.

But we treated ourselves to what was given, and never tricked — unless it was to run ahead into the bushes to frighten stragglers and our parents. No TP, no window-soaping, no flaming bags of doggie-doo — our mothers were just behind us, and the final trick always belonged to them.

Halloween, for us, was a pinch more of the magical and very little mayhem. Even the fake blood and weapons were kept to a minimum — our costumes were often created at home, and violence and gore were rarely themes.

As you might imagine, then, it saddens me to see more and more families (Blogger’s Note: And schools!) celebrating “fall festivals” and neglecting Halloween. It may be a holiday founded in paganism; it may be frightening, what with the ghouls, the goblins, the “slithy toves” and the “frumious bandersnatch,” but ultimately, it is one magical evening for youngsters — like Christmas, a night when the impossible can happen.

So, with a son not yet a year old and with too few teeth for Milk Duds, I can feel Halloween come creeping. The pumpkins are carved, the candles lit, and my eyes are wide once more.

Monsterku Honors!

/ J. Thorp / 3 Comments

Some of you saw the earlier post about Adam Rex’s kaiju haiku contest. Well, he announced the winners today, and our own lil monster got an honorable mention! How cool is that?

It occurs to me that I never shared the haikus Trevor and Gabe submitted. Trevor, it turns out, speaks in 17 syllables — while I was explaining to Gabe and Bren the rules of the contest, he said:

Dad, I know what the
important thing about horned
monsters is: the horns

A few days later, Gabe wrote:

He is big and bad
He is Frankenstein, he is
He is green and stiff

I love the homespun line “He is Frankenstein, he is” — shore nuff! I’m not the least bit proud — can you tell? Thanks, Jacqui, for pointing us to Adam Rex’s site!