An Attempt to Impress - Episode Five

I think my father-in-law is trying to kill me.

It might not be intentional (maybe), but it feels as if he is a witting accomplice to my demise.  As I told him how I was going to start this missive, he started to laugh, not like one of those evil characters from a Marvel Comics movie, but more like a possessed owl crossed with Roscoe Pecoe Train from the Dukes of Hazzard. 


In order to pass the time before and after the Mets baseball game, I asked Robert what I could do around the yard.  Since they have an acre of land, the first task I was given was to do the whipper snippering (in the U. S. it would be called 'Weed Whacking.')  After accomplishing that task, I put down a mental note of things that needed to be done and then we moved in for the inevitable coming of the Hobbit-like Second Breakfast called 'Morning Tea' which, well documented, consists not only of a steaming brew but also a veritable cornucopia of mixed fruits and biscuits which one consumes with great (pun-intended) relish but without any thought to how many calories are being ingested just two short hours after the first meal of the day when we broke the long fast of the nighttime.

After watching the Mets lose the only game that they probably will lose this year, I frustratedly checked my mental notes of how to deal with my disappointment and I decided that I would take apart Robert and Judith's doghouse and put the dismantled pieces on the firepile.  As I moved about in a workmanlike way, whistling various tunes with Dwarflike working singlemindedness, I noticed that Robert and Judith were playing marbles with their grandchildren.  Robert was still cackling away like Woodsey the Owl and Judith was continuing to find a way to defeat her grandchildren in that passive/aggressive way that only grandmothers can do and you still love them afterwards for it.  "Oh," they will say, "I so much wanted all you grandchildren to win," pinches their cheeks, "But I just can't control the dice.  It must have been a fluke."  She'll grin cheekily at you, oh yes she will, and inwardly she's already thinking about how to rub in the next loss.  Salt in the wounds, my friends, but grandmothers make it feel like sugar.

After gathering the appropriate tools (Robert has every conceivable tool known to man), I packed them into the back yard.  Let's just say I am not really a demolitions expert and the only tool I would have really needed was a sledgehammer, but I had some time that I wanted to pass in semi-quiet destruction.  Underneath the greenery in the backyard was the doghouse, a typical canine shelter with tin roof to keep the rain out.  After taking apart piece after piece, I brought around the wheelbarrow and placed the dismantled pieces in the cart.  Knowing my history with arachnids at the Smyth household, I was very careful about where I put my fingers and certainly where I placed my toes.  Lots of ants, lots of mold.  I was thankful that all the spiders had decided to move out of the shelter a long, long time ago.

Then, I pulled the entire mess to the burning pile and carefully, one at a time, threw broken board after board on the pile.  Once that was finished, I went back and told Robert that I was done.  He looked up at me through his glasses, "Oh, good, finished?  What did you do with the bricks?"

"Bricks?"  I responded.  "You want me to move those, too?"

He nodded (a veritable Hedwig) already back into his marbles games gleefully knocking his grandchildren off their marbled perches with great glee.

Back to the mine, I guess.  I pulled the wheelbarrow back and as I looked down at the bricks, it felt as if I was looking into the Valley of the Shadow of Death again.  From the beginning of this journey, now to its conclusion, I had been fearing evil, but here were these bricks with anywhere from three to eight holes in them.  Each one of these holes could safely carry any number of deadly invertebrates, and as I pondered this thought, I heard Robert in the background of my mind (well, I imagined him in the background cackling and laughing at my indecision and fear) and I decided that this was my moment to stop thinking that there is going to be something deadly in every nook and cranny of life in Australia.  NO MORE FEAR!  I shout to myself.  THERE IS NO NEED TO THINK THAT AUSTRALIAN SPIDERS WANT A PIECE OF ME ANY MORE THAN I WANT A PIECE OF THEM.  I felt like I was giving myself a pep talk before a marathon.  All in all, there were about twenty-five bricks, each just wide enough to grab across my palm. 

You can do this.

My whistle was trembling; I hoped it sounded like a tremolo.  One by one I attempted to look into the dark chasm of hell in each one of those holes not knowing whether to hope that there was a spider in there that I could see or be afraid that there wasn't a spider in there that I could see.  That's what fear does, doesn't it?  It doesn't allow us to think rationally about which would actually be better for us. 

Thankfully, I got all the bricks into the wheelbarrow with no arachnacidic incident, no Elvis impersonations or anything, but as I opened the back fence to place the bricks behind the shed the cart tipped over.  At this point I was sweating and thinking that I'd made it through this difficulty but now I had to pick them up two more times.  The first cart load was fine, but on the second one, I found something that I had overlooked:  On the ground was one more brick which, on closer inspection, had a large, white mass...

And on top of it was Shelob, the beast.  More hair than Elvis - kind of looked like Donald Trump, if you ask me; reddish mane fluttering in the wind maybe - Ivanka Trump is a better way of looking at this young lady.  And then my brain got going (as brains do when encountering their greatest fears) I had just put my entire palm over that spider.  Did I feel her tentacle testing the sweat from my hand?  Had she, indeed, actually played footsie with my fingers?  Did Robert actually plant that spider knowing that he would be inside at THISVERYMOMENT!!! playing marbles with my daughter while I brushed the hair of eight-legged death with my comb of fear?

Coo Coo Coo.  Roscoe Pecoe Train.


Why is it that the thing we fear most is the thing we seem to encounter most often?  If we are afraid of failure, constantly we are aware of the myriad of ways we could fail and our brains taking over telling us that, in fact, it's a foregone conclusion that we will.  If we are afraid of public speaking, we consistently are presented with nightmares of opportunities where we have to share information in front of others.  If we are afraid of death it seems as if we can think of different ways of dying in even the most mundane and trivial aspects of life.

Which is why, the fifth and last way to Actively Impress Your Spouse is:

#5.  Recognize the Present

Luke 12:22-24, 26  Then Jesus said to his disciples, "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear.  For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes... Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life?  Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?"

Why do we worry about the future?  How does it help?  Can the future hurt us at all?  One of the things that I've actively been trying to do with Christine is to plan for the future, but absolutely enjoy the present.  It does us no good if our barns are overflowing with stored up treasures, things that we have been hoarding our whole life long not just for that rainy day but moreso for that murky twenty-four hours in the future, and we are unable (or unhealthy enough) to actually enjoy the fruits and vegetables of our labor. 

When we recognize the present, which means enjoying all the people who are placed within the boundaries of our consciousness, we actually impress all others we encounter, not because we have it all together (far from the truth) but because we are coming together to enjoy the uncertainty of the future in the actuality of the present.  We raise a toast to the things that we cannot control, bless them for taking their best shot at us, and drink deeply of the vintage wine given to us right now. 

Right now.

I am actively trying to impress my wife by not allowing the little things to get at me and, for crying out loud, to take her out for a bite to eat, a movie with the kids, a Bible study or even a walk into the sunset to watch all of God's creation come together for a moment so that we can savor it. 

Recognizing the present allows us to give glory to God for his timing and his testing because it is in this present moment we recognize that all good things are added to us (not just physical things, the food and the clothing, but the spiritual gifts of peace, patience, kindness, etc...) when we live right here and right now.

I saw that in the way that Robert and Judith were engaging and enjoying their grandchildren and the way that (through some visits to Facebook) some people are actively engaging in the now, that an impressive world revolution can occur.  If we just live in the now.  No brain science.  No new ideas.  Just reality.

That's one of the hardest, but least financially unsettling, things we can do to actively impress the ones we are promised to for eternity.

So, to recap:

1.  Don't forget her birthday
2.  Save your child's life
3.  Start the fire
4.  Pay attention
5.  Recognize the Present

Enjoy.

An Attempt to Impress: Episode IV - the Final Countdown

There are quite a few songs that when the first notes are played, you immediately know what the song is, especially if you have them on shuffle on your iPod.  It wasn't that long ago that we were rewinding cassette tapes with our fingers, or fast forwarding to just the spot, stopping and starting so you can sing the first few notes of the song.

Here are a few that I can think of that you know within the first few seconds (admittedly, I know very little about any music that has been produced in the last fifteen years - my musical snobbery turns up a nose at digital manipulation and gaggingly simplistic lyrics; sorry about this)

1.  Stand By Me.  (I know, you've already got the bass and the triangle in your head)
2.  Ice, Ice Baby - alternatively, and a much better song Pressure.
3.  We Will Rock You
4.  Sweet Dreams
5.  Smells Like Teen Spirit
and 6, of course:

The Final Countdown.   Duh duh duh, duh; da da dat dat duh,...  Need I keep going?

I looked on a webpage called '23 One Hit Wonders You Can't Get Out of your Head.  I need help.

Point number four of Five Ways to Actively Impress Your Spouse are:  (drum roll and final countdown - duh duh duh, duh)

4.  Pay Attention

This sounds so easy, and it probably is for one guy on the planet - to just pay attention to the things that your spouse likes, and even more so, what she doesn't like.  But let's face it, as I ponder the gifts that God has given me and my ability to open them and use them, paying attention to detail ranks right up there with being able to style my daughters' hair.  Oh, I can do it, but it's very, very hard for me and it doesn't always turn out well.

Paying attention is the one thing in life that really doesn't cost anything.  You want a car - pay money; you want your lawn mowed, get your child to do it and pretend that seven dollars and twenty-five cents per hour is the going wage in some countries.  But attention, you don't give up anything except a little time and brainspace. 

My excuse is that I have low visual acuity - i.e. I just don't see stuff very well.  Usually, I blame it on the fact that I was in the incubator during my first week of life and it must have 'seared' my eyeballs so I don't see stuff.  I know that's not really true, but it sounds impressive.  Kind of like the fact that my head looks like a shark fin because when I was born, I didn't have a soft spot (in my skull).  The doctors had to take two strips of bone from the crown so that the bones would grow together naturally, but in doing so, I've got a low, jagged mountain range for a scalp.  Sometimes I tell people, when they look at my head for too long, that I was a conjoined twin with my brother.  I even tell them we shared a brain, had to separate us, you know.  I love it when they look concerned and say, "Oh really?  I didn't know they could do that."

So I don't see stuff well, but yesterday I patted myself on the back for something I hadn't noticed before.  I was opening the freezer door to grab some kind of frozen treat, when I looked at the door itself and it has a chart of how long foods can stay in the freezer.  I'm sure that most of you know that it's there, but my eyes were drawn to the chart and I was fascinated to see (for the first time even though I've been opening that door for five years) that there were pictures of corpses of chickens (which can keep for 0-12 months) a very dead looking fish (under three months is best) some nice steaks which can last a little longer...

But then, right smack dab in the middle of the chart is a very happy looking Easter Bunny-ish rabbit, all smiley and happy, big fluffy ears which seems delighted that it's meat can stay frozen for roughly half a year.  Australia, what a country!  Where you can shoot the Easter Bunny and then enjoy his gamey big legs in a yummy hasenpfeffer at Christmas time!

So now I consider myself a pretty observant and attentive person - all because of a freezer chart.

I am able to pay attention to Christine and I've learned to be much better over the years.  I already know the non-verbal cues that seem to speak many more words than the ones that are issuing from her lungs.  For instance, if she asks me a question like, "Do you think we should book the car in for a service next week?" and she has a hand on her hip and calendar in her hand, what question she's really asking is, "Can you give me an approximate day when you'll be booking the car in for a service and when I can put that date in my calendar?"  When it's nine thirty at night and the washing machine has just made its happy little beeping noises telling us its ready to regurgitate the clothes we put in there an hour and fourteen minutes earlier, and both of us are already snug in bed and reading our books, I know that deep sigh, long and slow, and the exasperated moan of tossing back the bed sheet - that means, "It's time for you to get out of bed and hang up the laundry."  See how good at this I am?

I also know that she is incredible at so many different things and her ability to pay attention to multiple different things at once, the finances, the children, the school, the price of gas, how many moons Saturn has, and carry on a conversation about all of them at once in consecutive sentences is mind-boggling.  I don't know how she can juggle all these things in her head and keep them active.  The icons on her brain screen must be lit up all the time and her home screen must be littered with notes and saved items.  Mine has probably four things: food, kids, work, where is my hat?

But what I've noticed lately is that I'm paying attention much more to the kind of time we have together.  I know that she doesn't want 'things' for her birthday, and for me to get her jewelry, or perfume, or (God forbid) clothes, would be akin to the average Joe buying a blender for a Silver Anniversary.

Because I have come to know that Christine loves words and music, I write things to, and songs for, her.  They are permanent.  My attentiveness has led to some great times of talking and her responsiveness, leads me to want to continue.  As we sat under the stars by the fire on that night at Ravensbourne, it continued to be ever more apparent that my spouse is not motivated by stuff but by attention and interaction.  I recognize that she would rather walk hand in hand along side a snake/leech/spider infested road than receive a fancily wrapped box of perfume.  That's just us - not every woman is like that, put I'm always learning to spend my attention on her.

I think all spouses can pay more attention to the little things that make us tick, not just the big ticket items, the cruises, the destinations, the cars and all that goes with financial stability (or instability).  If we could just think for a few minutes about the things that we miss with our eyes and focus on what the other person needs and wants, my how life would change.